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Comment by mitemte | Hacker News Reader

Is React irrelevant? Stack Overflow’s 2023 developer survey places it first overall for web technologies [1]. I’ve always considered React to be one of the more straightforward front end libraries, so it’s surprising to hear it being called bloated.

1. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-most-popular-t...

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The fact that you have to go to often heroic measures to keep your bundle size under 500KB even for simple apps doesn't make it irrelevant or useless. It is indeed bloated: on the development boilerplate side, the bundling/deployment side, and the browser runtime experience.

With an experienced and top-notch developer, anything is possible in any language or framework. For the other 95% of devs out there—especially on a team where the lead doesn't keep a strong grip on the reins—React turns to mud awfully fast. But it's mud with an extensive ecosystem and tons of inertia helping it succeed.

You nailed it, this is exactly my experience.

> Is React irrelevant? Stack Overflow’s 2023 developer survey places it first overall for web technologies

Consider jQuery. It was extremely popular once; was super influential to the point that some of its apis were adopted by the browser; is completely irrelevant now; but is taking a long time to die. I've been wondering whether React is destined to repeat this trajectory.

The worst library except for all the others? The complexities are there for good reasons IMO; I also like React — and I look forward to the compiler allowing simpler code.

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