CODEX

Part Of Why I Think React Is Junk

With Actual Examples!

I oft get a lot of flak for my extremely low view of front-end frameworks. For all the claims of being “easier” or “better for collaboration” or “faster to develop”, I find them to universally be the polar opposite.

React, Vue, Angular, and their kine make no sense to me. IF (big if) they are — or can be — used server-side, they’re nothing but code bloat rubbish adding extra steps of zero value. They don’t do anything server-side that functions/methods with template strings couldn’t accomplish cleaner/more efficiently. When used client side for normal things like shopping carts and contact forms they flip the bird at usability and accessibility since that stuff should either not be scripted in the first place, or at least have graceful degradation. Worse they “hide” actual DOM interactions and add unnecessary complexity.

Whilst as some point out it’s certainly possible to avoid some of these issues — see “Gatsby” — it only makes things an even bigger pointless mess that could have done simpler, cleaner, and in a more understandable manner without the frameworks. Server-side it’s as if HTML is too complicated so they make it even more complicated. Client-side it’s as if the DOM gets the same treatment.