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Comment by sylens | Hacker News Reader

As someone new to front-end and who will probably only be building small hobbyist stuff by myself, is the mountain climb that is mastering React worth it? From my initial look into it, it seems incredibly complex.

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React by itself is quite simple, but precisely because it's so simple a lot of third-party libraries have cropped up to fill out the gaps. I'm not sure if other ecosystems are really simpler, or if the complexity is just spread out differently… At least with React you have the option of not buying into Redux/GraphQL/etc. if you don't want to.

I'm quite fond of Vuejs. It's easy to get started... my first experience with it was too drop in the CDN link and start with the basic example. It can easily do anything react can do.

I think with React the core functionality / idea is much more simple than you'd imagine. The complexity evolves out of the add-ons and library situation, some do simplify the situation though, I find Next.js React apps incredibly powerful and easy to build on top of.

No, it is not. Unless you are planning to use your experience for getting a job, it is not worth it.

I would advise you to use vue or svelte.

Would most likely not factor into the career path as I don't have the time to dedicate myself to becoming a front-end pro

If career ambitions aren't a factor, I'd definitely second Svelte. I used to do frontend dev and switched into a more backend role, but every time I do a hobby project with frontend work, I always pick Svelte. I briefly peek into the others, but Svelte is the simplest by far.

Suggest going with Svelte. It’s been great.

React is the hotness of the moment. If you want to maximize career mobility, salary, and immaturity all at the same time React is for you.

React is eight years old. Sure is a long "moment".

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