I was a very early adopter of React and I am very grateful for it. It’s now it’s my job to listen carefully to the concerns of my teams and I’ve helped developers of all abilities and experiences through their troubles on all sorts projects over the years. In that time I’m sure I must have discussed all the good and bad things that can be said about React but if I’m honest I’m not hearing as much good nowadays.

I think the part of the reason React has been so successful is because its rules are easily communicated; components which render HTML or composed other components, state lives inside those components and props are passed down between them. How to deconstruct an interface into individual pieces and how data should flow through them really resonated with a lot of people.

But I think the shift to hooks means we’ve have lost the clear rules that made React so accessible to newcomers. Although hooks are still easy to get started with they seem to create confusion easily, and one wrong dependency or deriving state incorrectly and your laptop becomes a heater. This makes it more difficult for developers to focus on what they’re meant to be building because their heads are filled with an uncertain palette of distributed logic.

Now that the tiny API and rapid learning curve seem to have been abandoned I’m starting to think React may no longer designed to help solve the problems me and my teams are being asked to solve and perhaps the reason why hooks aren’t clicking for many people isn’t because they aren’t smart or willing enough, it’s because the mental model required to use React effectively no longer overlaps enough with the things we’re usually building.