A Tribute to React
Attention: This article may cause discomfort, particularly for individuals not from the React community. No offense is intended. Proceed at your own risk.
Preface. There was a surge in criticism towards React over the past year. Complaints ranged from reluctance of React’s core members to adopt the trending Reactivity API, to confusion over React Server Components. IMO, the significance of the issues is often exaggerated while the objective proposition value of React is neglected or diminished. In this article, I want to highlight one particular aspect of React that is hard to overestimate but often overlooked and taken for granted.
Ask yourself:
What has been the main pain point of frontend development in the past decade?
For many, it’s the ever-changing landscape of frontend development and the need to constantly re-learn, rewrite and fight with broken npm updates. It has become normal for a hyped and trendy technology to fall out of fashion within 2-3 years, get abandoned and become a tech debt burden for projects that relied on it.
We are lucky if our use of the guilty library is limited and the solution is straightforward. But dealing with more complex situations can become a nightmare causing the notorious fatigue. Many of us bear the scars from migrating AngularJS and Vue apps when those frameworks couldn’t find a way for further gradual evolution and seamless updates. Those unlucky enough to have bet on these frameworks felt the impact: businesses, developers, library authors.
Is there any major frontend technology that has stayed relevant for over a decade, never broken its ecosystem, evolved gradually, and continued growing in popularity? Is there such a bastion in this volatile field?
The obvious answer is React. It’s a true phenomenon.
React has earned a reputation as the least risky technology choice for frontend development. It has so far been the safest bet for business owners, developers and library authors.
With huge momentum, React continues to evolve, and its ecosystem thrives. IMO, the apprehensions about React’s state of affairs are exaggerated.
Why did React make it where many others fell short? Perhaps it is the initial ingenious design principles of React, that helped it stay flexible and evolve gradually. Or maybe it is the ingenious, pragmatic and cautious architectural decisions along the way from all core React developers. Likely, it’s a combination of both.
Let’s appreciate React for being such a phenomenon.
Let’s appreciate the immense achievement of React’s team.
The team has truly deserved better treatment, more respect, more trust and more patience from us.
Be nice. Be cute.
THANK YOU REACT! LONG LIVE REACT! 🤘