This was an internal analysis I wrote when challenged if Kroger.com could do the same MPA speed tricks as my Marko demo, but still using React beca...
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Based on my experience, the choice of framework is important, but it is even more important that software engineers understand what they are writing and how they are writing it. The framework organizes work, but does not guarantee a fast and stable application. The people factor is the weakest link here.
Great analysis. It doubles-down on what I think most people already know, which is that React is a pig. Nevertheless, I've chosen to stay w/ React despite spending far too much time porting my app to alt frameworks like SvelteKit, SolidStart, and QwikCity. With each alt, I found, despite much preferring the DX, I was not being near as productive. People say React eco is just a bunch of vanilla JS libs wrapped for React. I wish that were true, but it's not. For example, there is no declarative Framer equivalents for vanilla JS, and there are a plethora of mature UI frameworks to choose from for React (I use react-aria). Once a react-alternative emerges w/ critical mass to drive widespread 3P lib support from something more than single-person efforts (that often go abandoned) I'll reconsider a change. If I had huge dev team to fill in the gaps, I might feel differently.
Thanks for assembling a lot of very specific points against React far beyond my initial gut feeling when I first had to use it that it felt wrong and overengineered to use so much client side JavaScript to achieve things most of which should have been plain vanilla HTML and CSS. But web performance is always an important consideration.
The personal apps I make are just with MPAs, offline first. I use a little library I made called
mpa-enhancer. It works well enough. For really interactive parts of a web page I should probably use a front end framework, or something simple like that. But I have limited time and writing pages in a templating-style is extremely straight forward and easy to work with.But a lot of these JS libs always fascinate me. Like VanJS, Solidjs, Svelte, HTMX, and Marko. All really neat. But, like I said, with limited time
mpa-enhancerdoes the job good enough.React is not a good framework -- in fact it's supposedly a library not a framework -- but it is the hands-down leader if you want to get a front-end job. But it's one of the worst choices you could make if you have any flexibility. It's full of limitations and workarounds and quirks to the fact that it isn't a framework and was designed with goals that don't match the common use patterns of today.
It was a step forward at the time, and a great learning experience, and a reasonable choice if there weren't better choices. Fortunately, there are many alternatives that are much better choices.
For React developers, the best choice is probably SolidJS, as it will be very familiar, but without the quirks and limitations. It's very similar in syntax and look, but has fundamental differences. State isn't tied to components like in React (breaking MVC-like patterns). It is by definitional optimal, in terms of DOM updates. So much that its performance is roughly tied with vanilla JS, faster than most of the other choices, and much much more performant than React. Components run once, unless you define effects to run on reactive data updates (and only the effect runs). It's simple to understand, everything is just a normal function.
Other reasonable alternatives would include Svelte, or even Vue (although I've gotten a little cold towards Vue in Vue 3 -- it's getting complicated like React). But I think I'd rather use Angular or just jQuery than React. It is a drain on productivity and comes bundled with technical debt and code pollution.
It's time to move towards something better. Solid (or Svelte, or Vue). React is just horrible in comparison.
I think svelte addresses all react pain points very well
To continue your thought - Intention of the creators for creating the framework Svelte
My only (and biggest) personal pain point in using svelte is the missing IDE support in Intellij... Thats why I still use React. 2-3X App-Performance gain is nice - but I can't pay for it with a decrease of development speed with more than 25% (the jump from Intellij -> vscode). If you use vscode as your main IDE this does not apply to you.
Your link/quotation collection is awesome
Thank you
Thank you
Fantastic analysis as usual Taylor, well done.
Thank you. This is the 1st time I'm hearing the term "HTML Streaming". One of my professors called its opposite "The White Screen of Death".
Marko is indeed a fine choice for a lot of commercial sites, but if you want something that looks more familiar to react developers, maybe try Solid.js.
Astro is an MPA island framework with very similar DX to React.. in fact you can use React islands to slowly migrate away… to Preact or Solid or whatever…