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Comment by kobalsky | Hacker News Reader

> Being able to ignore parallel rendering, RSC, hooks, etc, and just write simple code for simple sites again would be fantastic.

I don't understand this statement. You can use the basics without involving yourself with anything complex. You can even still use class components. You can build components that are framework agnostic.

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When you're new it can be hard to tell what to ignore; it makes it tempting to pick a simpler framework that you can entirely grasp. Also any published examples, chatgpt etc won't be aware of the subset you've chosen to use when they're providing examples; they're gonna draw from the full set.

Also you may have to maintain code bases that don’t use your preferred subset.

And you may have to work with developers who have a different preferred subset.

I feel like that's more of an issue with the examples and LLMs? Discounting a framework just because it has ever increasing, completely optional capabilities doesn't compute to me. I'm not convinced there's a real problem.

The problem comes in when the complexity is both not optional and not rational.

Hooks do not work as real functions. They are magic. Why are they magic? I don't know, they certainly don't need to be. What state do they change? I don't know. Why do they look pure but actually mutate the application states? I don't know.

Why is react not reactive? Why is it if I change state the entire website rerenders? I don't know. React has a virtual dom. It knows when I change state because I have to tell it, manually. And then... It doesn't use those.

But it's okay, because you can `useMemo`. Why do I have to do that? I don't know.

Evidently I don't have to do that, because react has a compiler that does it automatically now. Why can't react just do it? I don't know. Clearly it's possible. And also every other framework does it.

There are real functional libraries like Effect, pretend functional library like React and just honest old style library like MobX. I think I know my preferred style.

Last time I looked, their own docs didn't even tell you how to create a basic SPA, merely that it was possible and scary. That doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

They did just (re-)add a section on that in response to community request: https://react.dev/learn/build-a-react-app-from-scratch

> you can even still use class components

yes, but literally everyone will tell you to move away from that. It's like saying if you're not physically violated then you should put up with verbal harassment because it doesn't matter in any real way.

At the very least whoever using class components would have to routinely defend their decision every quarter when confronted by colleagues who understandably just wanna write conventional code.

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