Wake Up, Remix | Hacker News Reader

Wake Up, Remix

remix.run

33 pointsdimitrisnl18 comments

Remix v3 isn’t just a new direction, it’s a full reboot. They’ve scrapped React, forked Preact, teased their own UI library, and are positioning themselves as a zero-dependency, fully self-owned framework. It’s not evolution, it’s erasure.

Let’s not forget how Remix got here. It gained traction primarily by merging into the React Router repo, inheriting 11M dependents and a decade of credibility it didn’t earn. From there, it became a thin abstraction over React Router before going dark entirely with the now-famous “taking a nap” announcement.

Now it’s back. Not with stability, not with iteration, but with a declaration, “We’re doing our own thing.” No React. No compatibility. A fresh stack, built from scratch.

Why? That’s the real question.

Shopify reportedly acquired Remix for ~$40M. Maybe this is them pushing for something big and new to justify the investment. Or maybe it’s the founders wanting full-stack ownership and long-term lock-in. Or maybe, with the pressure off post-acquisition, this is just Rich People™ messing around with legacy projects instead of supporting their users.

The leaked version of this pivot was even more aggressive, it openly criticized React and dubbed the shift a “Declaration of Independence.” The blog post toned that down, but the core direction hasn’t changed. It’s still a move away from the ecosystem that gave them a user base, toward something inward-looking and self-defined.

They claim to still be maintaining React Router. But it’s the same team now split across two projects. That means both will slow down. One is legacy support mode, the other is vaporware until proven otherwise.

Meanwhile, others in the space are embracing the now. They’re solving the hard problems of 2025 head-on. They’re building with the current stack, improving developer experience, shipping usable features, and making the future better, not by erasing the past, but by working with it.

This isn’t thoughtful evolution, it’s a hard reset with unclear motives, launched by a team with less to lose than their users.

Trust is easy to lose in devtools. This is how you lose it.

No AI slop please

> They claim to still be maintaining React Router. But it’s the same team now split across two projects. That means both will slow down.

I agree with your sentiment.

But how complext is react routing if it needs an entire dedicated team?

Routing in any language or system is famously regarded as the "easiest" thing to build as a toy, but the hardest thing to get right at scale. Everyone and their dog has built some kind of "router" for themselves, but very few can do it to the extent that it works for more than just them, their company, or a select few externally. Props to the React Router team for being able to do it on a global scale. But for them to effectively move on as if they're "done" and that there's no more polish or innovation to happen on React Router is asinine. A great example: Ryan/mj ignored for a long time (and still resent) TypeScript. Tanstack comes along and launches actual complete typescript support to it's router like 3 years ago, which then triggers Remix users to demand something from their overlords. They eventually give in and add some hacky code-generation and watered down href utility and confidently say they are finally type-safe.

They likely won't touch it again (just like Next hasn't touched their IDE type safe plugin in a year).

They're simply purist craftsmen. They'll keep chasing "perfection" over practicality at any cost other than financial security.

Slop detected

probably not, there's a few comma splices in there

so was considering doing a rewrite of a Next project to Remix.

but then, as I look into it, Remix is now actually React Router v7. that seemed odd, even though I knew the author was the same I was always under the impression that these are distinct projects.

but fine, perhaps the evolution of both has converged. I got too confused to invest time in the rewrite. now, seems like Remix is being rebooted?

all these changes over the years seem well intentioned, but it takes away confidence in investing time in these solutions. If the justification to rebrand completely to React Router was that there are no serious functional differences between it and Remix, having a hard time understanding why Remix is now in the picture again.

What was Remix got merged into react-router, since Remix eventually was mostly a wrapper around RR + a server.

Now my read is they’re rebooting the Remix name to go their own way on the framework.

As a current Next and prior Remix dev, my rec is both are good in their own way. I wouldn’t hesitate to use react-router if it’s what you want to do.

The original title is `Wake up, Remix!` with an exclamation mark. Now it reads more like "Come on now Remix.."

"To do that, we need to own the full stack — without leaning on layers of abstraction we don't control. That means no critical dependencies, not even React. We're starting with a fork of Preact, a mature virtual DOM library already used heavily at Shopify, Google, and countless others."

I really wish there were more details around why they chose to start with a fork of Preact beyond just this sentence. Sort of a surprising decision to me.

I'd guess to add something like RSC or more integrated data loading. Seems like we have to wait until October to find out more, but hopefully they drop more information earlier.

the react router / remix shenanigans is why I stepped away from react and went to vue with it's more coherent ecosystem. one day react router changes - next it's nextjs - you can never keep up. with vue you changes only have been composition api & pinia but you can still use the old api's. vue-router hasn't exactly changed.

Soooo... I just started a new project using React Router v7 a couple months ago... how much should I be worried that RR is gonna be poorly maintained from here on out?

Weird first principle, but have been using Preact + htm for my own no-build stuff recently, so looking forward to what Ryan and Michael are cooking.

> This isn't just a new version — it's a new direction. One that's faster, simpler, and closer to the web itself.

people really just be raw posting whatever chatgpt spits out huh

Could be. Although people sometimes accuse my own blog posts of being AI-generated (they're not, just my shitting writing).

There's a suspicious number of emdashes in this post, too.

Let's call it Premix

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