Removing User Interface Complexity, or Why React is Awesome
Just want to say thanks to jlongster and everyone who's commented on here; I created an account just to say thanks. I'm an amateur web dev/designer trying to figure out how to move beyond static web pages, and have read what would probably amount to a literal ton of material were it printed out, on frameworks, libraries, and more acronyms than I could imagine. Outside of HTML, JS, and CSS, even "basic" things like Sass and CoffeeScript I hadn't heard of just a few months ago, and I've since been all over the world (wide web) looking for info on ASP.NET (which my group at work decided last year was what we should be doing "web-kinda stuff" in, as well as Angular, Ember, Backbone, Knockout, Node, etc etc, and everything new (to me) that research like that comes with.The discussion here has led me to a few more things to research, but I feel it's been very helpful in helping me think critically about the vast array of possibilities a budding web designer has to deal with. I just wanted somebody to provide an objective view of "If you're going to be doing medium-complexity web apps end-to-end, then learn ______" and I still would love that, but don't think it's possible to get. The alternative, as I've been doing, is just to learn a little about everything, try to figure out the kind of things I plan to do, and then find the paradigm that works, be it vanilla technologies, something like React, Web Components, or a framework (and I've been trying to learn Angular and like it, but it's tough to grasp). It just seems like as soon as I've decided on what I want to learn, I read a new post with a title like "Why You Shouldn't Use  and Why  Is Really the Way to Go."So anyways, a long-winded thanks, but a thank you nevertheless for the open discussion here; I feel better now that I'm not trying to find the one-and-done "best" thing for making web apps in general.