I hate hate hate React! Sorry but to me it's just such a bloated pos of a framework. I realize it was pretty revolutionary at first, the idea of having everything "reactive" and all of that - but newer things like Svelte.js are a dream to work with, whereas trudging through the poorly coded React app I'm supposed to be testing for work is making me want to pull my hair out! I installed a vscode tool so everybody could see what the import "cost" is on everything - a simple INPUT is 50KB of pure BLOAT for something that should and can be way simpler.

I realize there are probably better coded apps out there that wouldn't drive me so crazy, but anybody importing hundreds of KB of 3rd party crap just to get a select box, some inputs, and a date picker are really out of their mind.

@AlexDeLarge Ah but you clearly didn't read my rant very carefully. This is not my app. It is an app at work, one I did not write but have been tasked with testing. Therein lies the pain.

Sorry, I dislike many things about React. I find it bloated, full of unnecessary boilerplate and dependencies, and I think even the virtual dom is no longer necessary. Please see inferno, riot, and svelte.js if you want examples of projects I prefer.

So yes, it is in fact React's fault, the apps are simply bloated and there is very little way to argue that they aren't.

The thing I don't like with react is tsx/jsx... When I developed with PHP was back when people started taking Oop PHP seriously and people was removing their PHP from the html

Having your html and logic in the same file feels like a step backwards, and why I learnt Angular instead.

Of course, I could be completely wrong about react (I'm sure I will be told why I'm wrong soon enough)

Your argument is incomplete, full of information gaps and incorrect in many cases.

Boilerplate: react is the view layer, how much simpler can you get from an arrow function returning your html component?

Virtual dom: what are you basing your decision on? We are still developing web apps for devices which are not your anywhere close yo the dev laptops you use. dom manipulations causing redraws are still too expensive for those devices. It's worth keeping in mind that react is also used in react native, react tv etc which would benefit from less communications over the bridge and redraws.

Bloated & dependencies: Out of the example libs you gave, only svelte does not have any dependencies. The others have a similar or worse dependency tree to react. I agree that dependencies make a project bloated, and should be reduced, but almost any lib has deps.

@Bingy react is the view layer. Your business logic should sit outside of the component files.

Hiya @dfox - what a great site you've built. Probably on top of React, lol. I like the styles and everything loads lightning fast, you've done a lovely job.

AAAAGgggghghghg just when I thought the pain might stop, I find yet another set of NESTED components inside yet another nested folder. God save us from developers whose first app is an wanna-be enterprise level React application!!!!!!!

and the index.js alone is over 800 loc for an f'ing simple PROFILE page!!!!!! With no less than 33 imports, including 70KB min of lodash among other offenders, surely for 1 or 2 simple utilities like _.includes (yo dawg not needed anymore) and _.sample (a 2 liner redone in vanilla). I am going to puke now and throw my laptop into a nearby volcano.

@AlexDeLarge please feel free to pile onto my pain here by telling me how lovely React is in the hands of savant devs...

@AlexDeLarge see, your anger and uber nastiness has made me feel better already. And sorry pal, I could give a rat's keister what you think, and I'll mention you whenever is suits me.

I fucking love React now and will learn as soon as possible. Svelte become a mess to me recently. I just opened a rant on it

@stace

Solid.js is a good alternative similar to React