I think I could quote this whole video: What is React.js via Haydon Pickering.
I’ll stick with two pullquotes though.
The React logotype, depicting an atom, evokes the infamous Manhattan Project, wherein a number of very clever people created some extremely dubious technology just to prove they could.
See? It’s funny cause it’s true!
This one too:
An important feature of React is the virtual DOM. As the state of a complex and “realtime” interface changes, React may need to make multiple and concurrent updates to the DOM. Since these changes are costly, it maintains a lightweight version of the DOM and makes changes to this instead. Since this virtual DOM does not itself represent any kind of user interface, the same changes must be made to the real DOM as well.
This doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t have to.
Nowhere is the frivolousness of the virtual DOM more on display than in React’s sudden hard pivot to server side rendering, which introduces a handful of ways to create an overly complicated, dependency riddled application that does more or less what PHP does.
I think about the bind WordPress has put itself in. To support backwards compatibility, WordPress has to stay chained to React for the rest of its lifecycle, all because of their first major decision (and even though many people told them not to. Even if they had gone with Preact, the surface area of supported code would be so much smaller). Now that React seems determined to leave client side rendering in the dust and push everyone to frameworks, WordPress can’t move forward either. Keep in mind that React hasn’t had a real update in years, and that all of it’s future plans are SSR dependent.
So what to do.
Maybe they should large parts out and move to web components. Everything we need is right there in the browser.
Notes Block – hello from the saved content!