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> React is also how you get consistent design across a major web app. Can you imagine if every button on every site was the same Windows button gray color, regardless of the site's color? It'd be awful! React components (with CSS classes) are a way for a site like Amazon to make all their buttons orange (although I don't actually know if Amazon uses React specifically).

I don't understand this point specifically. I make all buttons on a site have the same theme without needing a framework, library or build-step!

Why is React (or any other framework) needed? I mean, you say specifically "React is also how you get consistent design across a major web app.", but that ain't true.

It depends on the type of site/app you are building. If you are building a basic website (not a web application), or a simple application, you don't need React (or a similar framework like Vue or Angular). You might not even need Javascript at all.

However, as you build more complex and interactive applications, you need "framework", like React. It's essential to simply handle the complexity of such applications. You will not find a major web app that is built with out a framework (or if it is, the owners will essentially have to create their own framework).

When you're using such tools, they are how you enforce consistent UI. Take Tailwind, the hugely popular CSS framework (I believe its #1). They have nothing to do with Javascript ... but even they willl tell you (https://v3.tailwindcss.com/docs/reusing-styles#extracting-co...):

"If you need to reuse some styles across multiple files, the best strategy is to create a component if you’re using a front-end framework like React, Svelte, or Vue ..."

The author is completely mistaken in thinking React ... or even that layer of web technology at all (the development layer) ... has anything to do with what he is complaining about. It has everything to do with design choices, which are almost completely separate from which framework a site picks.

I am not convinced that, when using a framework (React, etc), the best way to enforce consistent UI is via the framework.

A button should be styled independent of the framework. That's how you will get consistency. Same with every other non-component element.

The use of the component framework should be to consistently style non-primitive style elements (all the standard HTML elements).

What value is there in using React/whatever in styling buttons, links, paragraphs, headings, various inputs, etc? Today, in 2026, even menus, tabs, etc are done with nothing more than primitive elements; what value does React bring to the consistency of menus that you don't already have?

Do you have any idea what you are talking about?

Serious question: I have one response for fellow web dev, and another (that would be pedantically explanatory, and maybe even offense to a web dev) for a non-web dev.

Design is more than styling, it is also behaviour and state, which is what react helps you encapsulate in a component.

> Design is more than styling, it is also behaviour and state,

Maybe I need an example of this for buttons: what behaviour on buttons should be consistent? What about state - what state on buttons should be consistent?

The core value of front-end JavaScript frameworks is state management. You don't need to use a framework, but the need to manage complex application state doesn't go away.

Take this example: when a checkout button on an ecommerce website/application is triggered, the button should reflect that state and prevent re-triggering the same action so the button has to be disabled, then ideally a loading state has to be shown. When that action fails, an error may need to be displayed. Ideally you would use native DOM states first, ARIA states may be used if no native DOM states can be used, and if that's not enough then custom data states may be necessary.

Styling should be reacting to application state, preventing impossible states and bugs to create predictable UIs. Thus, styling is also a state management concern. UI=fn(state).

> Can you imagine if every button on every site was the same Windows button gray color, regardless of the site's color?

Not a webdev, but can't you just use CSS on the <button> element for that?

Yes you can, on a small/simple site. But on a serious web application sticking to plain HTML/CSS will be far too limiting, in many ways.

There's a reason why 99.9% of web apps use JavaScript, and with it a tool (framework) like React, Astro, Angular, or Vue. And if you're using such tools, you use them (eg. you use React "components") to create a consistent UI across the site.

But again, which tool you use to develop a site has very little to do with what design choices you make. A React dev with no designer to guide him might pick the most popular date picker component for React, and have the React community influence design that way, but ... A) if everyone picks the most popular tool, it becomes more idiomatic (it's not doing this that creates divergence), and B) if there is a human designer, they can pick from 20+ date picker libraries AND they can ask the dev team to further customize them.

It's designers (or developers playing at being designers) that result in wacky new UI that's not idiomatic. It has (almost) nothing to do with React and that layer of tooling, and if anything those tools lead to more idiomatic design.

> Can you imagine if every button on every site was the same Windows button gray color, regardless of the site's color? It'd be awful!

As it happens, this is how it was for years and years, actually, for most of the existence of the Web. The basic appearance of form elements used to be un-styleable, locked to the OS UI-appearance, for general usability concerns.

>>> Can you imagine if every button on every site was the same Windows button gray color, regardless of the site's color? It'd be awful!

Speaking as a user not a developer, it'd be lovely.

> Amazon to make all their buttons orange

> It'd be awful!

Why do I care about their choice of a screaming color for my buttons?

> same Windows button gray

We don't need to go the other extreme, can there be no middle ground of letting users pick between the boring gray and the bright orange? You know, a good system could even offer you a choice of palette that takes the website color into account...

> Can you imagine if every button on every site was the same Windows button gray color, regardless of the site's color?

Imagine how cool would it be if we had a pure, logical language where we could set properties in a page based on the properties of the objects around it!

> Tell me you know nothing about web development without saying you know nothing about web dev

This Twitterism really bugs me.

You took the time to write a really detailed response (much appreciated, you convinced me). There’s no need to explicitly dunk on the OP. Though if you really want to be a little mean (a little bit is fair imo), I think it should be closer to level of creativity of the rest of your comment. Call them ignorant and say you can’t take them seriously or something. The twitterism wouldn’t really stand on its own as a comment.

Sorry for the nitpicky rant.

I think that's a fair criticism.

It bugs me that the author is "dunking on" React without knowledge on the matter (React is the tool you use to enforce consistent UI on a site; it has almost nothing at all to do with a design decision to have inconsistent UI). So I guess I "dunked on him" in response.

But ... too wrongs don't make a right. I'd remove the un-needed smarminess, if it wasn't already too late to edit.