RFC: Intent to Ship React 18
&#x27;useSyncExternalStore()&#x27; -- Gack!<p>Now...that &quot;little&quot; it&#x27;s-not-a-framework-it&#x27;s-a-library whose scope is supposed to be confined to just the &quot;view&quot; part of MVC (by which I mean: &quot;React&quot;) is inserting it&#x27;s tentacles (along with a quirky architecture and proven to be error-prone coding patterns, cough, hooks) into the _model_. And it&#x27;s already corrupted (at least partially) the &quot;controller&quot; part of MVC through React&#x27;s synthetic events. But hey, at least React doesn&#x27;t have one of those nasty DSLs, like those Web application libraries&#x2F;frameworks that use a simple templating syntax on top of plain HTML. Oh wait, JSX is a . . . DSL, and a pretty nasty one at that, given that it&#x27;s ever-confusing as where JavaScript syntax is legal vs. where HTML is legal; and, oh yeah, the bracketing rules fight each other all day long. But hey, what do you expect when you combine the careful syntax design of JavaScript with the terseness and simplicity of, umm, XML?<p>So now React&#x27;s about to ship version 18, which provides functionality which is _roughly comparable_ to version, ummmm, _<i>3</i>_ of Vue.js??? Well, let&#x27;s see, the React folks have _already, in just a few years_ deprecated (as best I remember): Class-based components, Mix-Ins, Higher-Order Components (HOCs) . . . what&#x27;s next--let&#x27;s deprecate hooks?, in favor of, oh I don&#x27;t know, . . . .sheesh!<p>Please just STOP now. Wind up the company and give the money back to the investors. (Yes, I know that React is Meta-sponsored FOSS; that last comment was just pure snark...)<p>On a personal note, I&#x27;d like to rebut a comment made elsewhere on this page by &#x27;0des&#x27;: &quot;The JS ecosystem skews younger, not in age, but in years programming.&quot; As a counter point, I&#x27;ve been doing Web application development since the early 2000s. Yes, I&#x27;ve worked with Web app. libraries and frameworks that many Front End Developers have not used, or maybe even heard of. Backbone, sure. How about GWT? Or maybe ES4, by which I mean Adobe Flex? How about TIBCO General Interface?<p>Have you heard of Vitamin C? Trick question--it&#x27;s not a Web view&#x2F;app library or even a GUI library--it&#x27;s a TUI library from the late 1980s&#x2F;early 1990. Which is to say, I shipped my first front-end code in <i>1984</i>. And even though I also do full-stack coding, and UX stuff, most of my career has been in front-end coding, both desktop applications AND web applications. Which is to say, at least anecdotally (and possibly egotistically), that I think that I have a pretty well-informed opinions on what makes a good front-end framework.<p>React impresses me not-at-all; except in a: look-at-me-I&#x27;m-so-clever way--now new-and-improved--with extra _functional_ goodness(TM). Conversely, I&#x27;ve scaled Vue.js and Flex applications with so little stress (but with tremendous productivity) that I could laser-focus on the feature set, and on delivering a top-notch user experience.<p>I need a Web application framework (or at least a View&#x2F;Rendering mgmt. library) that has these things:
- Strong support for UI componentization
- CSS isolation
- Clean, orthogonal, basic abstractions for change handling and local state management
- Tractable to scale
- M, V, and logic aspects are (easy to) decouple<p>Also very useful:
- One-way data binding
- Robust, but low-ceremony approach to centralized state management
- Flexible, but type-safe way to marshall&#x2F;un-marshall data going out&#x2F;coming in<p>I&#x27;m open to assessing other&#x2F;new libraries, but the last five years of my career have almost wholly involved coding with Vue.js or React. HOWEVER, I only learned React because I thought that the job market demanded it--not because I ever thought that it was a great library! I&#x27;m open to learning other&#x2F;newer libraries, if they are promising enough, AND if if looks like there is job market demand for them. But the previous version of Vue.js already gave me all five of the needs that I mentioned, above; plus one-way and pseudo two-way data binding. So all I need is Vuex5&#x2F;Pinia for state management (but I&#x27;d be willing to also look at something like a Vue-specific alternative to Tanner&#x27;s React Query), and there is an increasing wealth of solutions for data marshalling with or without GraphQL.<p>So, bottom line, in my current job search I am taking a hard line: if React is required, then I&#x27;m out. And if you&#x27;re already using Vue, or are at least open to modernizing your current front-end coding approeach, then I&#x27;m interested.