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React is not about performance

Artur Ampilogov on January 31, 2024

Key Takeaways React is the most popular JavaScript rendering framework. React full-stack frameworks, like Next.JS and Remix, are recommended for ...
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adaptive-shield-matrix profile image
Adaptive Shield Matrix • • Edited

React is 11 20 years old and it shows.

There are now much more specialized web frameworks that do specific functions much more better than general rendering library like React itself.

The main thing a web dev has to decide is that he wants/needs:

  • SPA
  • SSR
  • SSG
  • the flexibility of all 3 above

Best Frameworks / Libraries

  • SSG -> Astro
  • SPA in JSX Syntax -> Solid.js
  • SPA without JSX -> Svelte, Vue
  • SSR in JSX Syntax -> Qwik
  • Simplified Next.js -> Remix
  • all 3 -> Next.js, Sveltekit, Nuxt
  • Do not want to do Frontend -> use HTMX generated by golang templates

Note on Performance

  • Svelte and Solid.js -> are the most fastest and efficient ways how you can do SPAs
  • Qwik -> is the fastest possible SSR solution, shipping near zero JS on page load.
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meatboy profile image
Meat Boy •

React is 20 years old and it shows.

What? React was founded in 2013 so 11 years ago.

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adaptive-shield-matrix profile image
Adaptive Shield Matrix •

You are right

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Adaptive Shield Matrix • • Edited

The main reason React got so popular is because of DX (developer experience).

React was the first Framework that did very complex web applications (Facebook).
React biggest strength is HMR (Hot module reload).
If you have complex state and have to reload the page and then redo the 10-20 clicks you need test the UI state -> this becomes quickly unbearable if you doing it 10-100 times a day working on UI without HMR.

Back then, 20 years ago, then React started there was only Angular.js as an alternative. Angular burned much dev community goodwill by breaking its custom DSL each major upgrade. React is still backward compatible and you can use old class components even today.

React, being only a library, with only a single minded goal at doing rendering -> allowed to grow a very big ecosystem of tools/libraries to build upon.

My best/favorite example is react-email / jsx-email -> writing cross platform emails is very painful, the React/JSX model allows to easily use the rendering model of react in other/different domains.

If you want to beat React then you have to provide good tooling and a great developer experience. This is very hard to do. For example, the only reason I'm not switching from React to Svelte (and I tried) is because of missing IDE integration in Idea/Intellij.

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András Tóth •

This article was a breeze of fresh air.

I often felt with the React-Redux stack that I was not "smart enough" to deal with it, that I make mistakes still, and that I have to really concentrate on doing the right thing. Now both of these feel like they were designed by academic minds, but not crafty, seasoned developers that know how to make obvious designs.

Which is, in reality, probably a design mistake. Have you heard of the "Was it really a human error that crashed the plane?". Things that depend on the freshest brain of a well-rested person are in fact not designed well.

So with Signals, it seems that many of these problems could have been eliminated earlier and at the root.