Having used react and redux for several years now, I'm a bit burnt out on how bloated and silly the entire front end has become. If I could decide for myself, I probably would use raw DOM or jQuery at this point.
Sorry to pick on your post over the million and one other ones that pop every time jQuery gets mentioned in HN (same for the "look at my my blog website that just uses HTML/CSS" posts), but why is it silly? There's no halcyon period where it was simpler and easier, and the tools are in general much better than they were.
Because of bloated frameworks and slow convenience libraries the front end is a very low barrier of participation. The problem there is then that peoples’ entire careers and life worth are stacked around these fragile glass houses and the only thing they want is to avoid being exposed as a fraud.
Is writing a killer product without all the bullshit that impossible? No, clearly not, but that completely misses the point.
- Got rid of redux because it's shit
- Got rid of Material UI because it's bulky and its API changes are painful, replaced it with tailwind
- Got rid of React Router because it's bulky and its API changes are also painful, replaced it with a simple hook
On low-end devices it's a bit too much (I'm talking about edge-case users with phones as cheap as $50). It was also quite a chore keeping up with their API changes every couple months.
I forced myself to cut down on components and just style my UI with CSS. It's more consistent, more predictable, and less strain on the end-user's device. It's a trade-off across looking good, better end-user performance, good user experience, good developer experience, and having more time for the product and users instead of maintaining and updating dependencies.
As someone who worked on large jQuery apps before React, I think most people would jump back into React or Vue in the first chance after seeing a non-trivial jQuery app. Not to mention there was a lot of "bloat" in those apps, too: Backbone, Bootstrap, Moment.js...
jQuery was amazing for small things, for landing pages, for some Bootstrap components here and there, and for sprinkling the page with progressive-enhanced features. And it still is probably the best choice.
But it was not a great fit for moderate-to-large apps. And it was a terrible fit for moderate-to-large apps that only consumed data from an API.
Not saying React and Redux are good, but I think at least the parts of React, Angular and Vue that replaced jQuery were definitely a step in the right direction.
I'm also not saying that "big apps" are the way to go. If I could I would go back to server-side rendered HTML and modern CSS, but it has become hard to find developers that are into it.
I strongly recommend reading through the newly rewritten official tutorials in the Redux docs, which have been specifically designed to show our recommended practices:
- "Redux Essentials" tutorial [0]: teaches "how to use Redux, the right way", by building a real-world app using Redux Toolkit - "Redux Fundamentals" tutorial [1]: teaches "how Redux works, from the bottom up", by showing how to write Redux code by hand and why standard usage patterns exist, and how Redux Toolkit simplifies those patterns
The older patterns shown in almost all other tutorials on the internet are still valid, but not how we recommend writing Redux code today.
You should also check out the Redux "Style Guide" docs page [2], which explains our recommended patterns and best practices, and why they exist. Following those will result in better and more maintainable Redux apps.
[0] https://redux.js.org/tutorials/essentials/part-1-overview-co...
[1] https://redux.js.org/tutorials/fundamentals/part-1-overview
Look at svelte if you haven’t.
It doesn't have a compilation phase but it allows us to use Preact, and it's only 5k.