To me it's so out of reality that it tainted his whole article
Granted I'm not in the US tech scene, but I chose React because AngularJS was horrible (it took one project to never again touch it) and Backbone was arcane and confusing, and I really clicked with JSX
I was sort of expecting him to go after SSR mania, which would make a lot more sense to me (I am guilty of of this). But railing on an abstraction pattern that literally brought JavaScript out of the dark ages seems way off.
I have noticed in myself and other developers with a decade plus that there is new tech fatigue eventually. With enough cynicism it can look like everyone is trying to use their new hammers on everything (sometimes they are). But I think that’s the flip side to this article and I’m glad he made the React point because it really elucidates the whole thing. Everyone looks like they have a hammer complex when you aren’t interested in learning new things. I think there’s so much value in experience and until he got to React, my internal dialogue was shouting “amen” after every sentence but it’s painfully clear the author did not want to engage or think about the problems React solved.
- React is the iPhone of the frontend library world. Not the first, some will never say it's the best, but it put things together in a way that resonated with people and organically conquered a ton of mindshare.
- React is the Model T. Before the Model T there was a massively fragmented landscape full of mechanical wizardry and bespoke manufacturing. After the Model T the industry was larger, more consolidated, and standardized.
I don't believe that React will dominate forever. But I do believe that, 50 years from now, people talking about the history of the frontend will view React as the defining thing from the era we're in now.
React itself is just a really good JS library, not a full opinionated framework. I made the choice to use React because it was possible to add individual interactive components to an ASP.NET Razor MPA without rewriting the whole thing. Gradually React takes over more and more functionality, necessitating a need for a framework, and then we get the iPhone experience.