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Comment by rcme | Hacker News Reader

The React framework has a framework called framework?

React continues to describe itself as only a library, and IMO that's still all that it is. The author argues this point:

> if you choose to forgo a framework, what you're really choosing is to build your own bespoke framework

It's hard to take the "library" claim seriously, when React has its own source code language that needs to be compiled to be used in any practical way.

JSX predates React, React does not require JSX; it's not "its own source code".

Bootstrap was written in Less, that needs to be compiled. Is Bootstrap a library?

Approximately no one uses React without JSX. Probably because writing react that way kills a lot of the utility of it.

It's possible to use only the built output of bootstrap as a static CSS file. The nature of react is that your own code is in the other language, so it's fundamentally different than the bootstrap situation.

I think it has more to do with JSX being really good, rather than killing the utility of it.

I mean, JSX is fine. (mostly) But the fact of its existence, and ubiquity of its use shows that, as it's actually used, React is much closer to a framework than a library. It has a step in the build. That's not library behavior.

Fine, let's call it a "framework". Then I still think the was it's actually used is with another "framework" (and it's annoying)

The better argument is that JSX is just syntactic sugar. It's just Javascript driving around in a fancy HTML-colored car.

React is pretty hard to stomach without that sugar. It's practically pretty hard to use without. The way it's actually used in the real world (with JSX) it doesn't quack like a library.

> It's possible to use only the built output of bootstrap as a static CSS file

Correct, it "needs to be compiled to be used in any practical way". That was your criticism of React, and the reason it didn't qualify as a library.

Bootstrap was written in Less, that needs to be built. Is Bootstrap a library?

No, JSX was created by Meta (Facebook) when they developed React. It dos not predate it.

Greenspun’s Tenth Rule is evergreen:

Any sufficiently complicated framework-free program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of a framework.

A framework framework?

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