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on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI The React Foundation
darepublic wrote 13 min ago:
I still like React but I agree that it has lost its way somewhat. Hooks
are very counter-intuitive and I don't think you can really call them a
successful abstraction. You just get used to them over time. I don't
use this react suspense stuff, nor have I kept up with the latest
server side rendering with React tech. It doesn't appeal to me, I only
use next + react with the pre-rendered export path and I think that
niche still works fantastic. But at some point in the future they may
take this away from me.
This tends to happen with frameworks. A new one arises (next / react)
and then over the course of many major version updates tends to just
scope creep and try to do too much, or is monetized (next) and needs to
find ways to justify people spending money on what was previously just
free open source code.
wry_discontent wrote 3 min ago:
React was such a simple and elegant solution when it started, and
it's accreted so many quirks and weird behaviors that are clearly
specific to the use cases of the companies leading development.
At this point, I'm not interested in what they're doing anymore. I'm
not starting new projects with React, and I'd move away from it for
anything small.
r_lee wrote 32 min ago:
Is that logo/banner AI generated?
modo_mario wrote 1 hour 1 min ago:
If from this indeed follows more push for ssr and vercel related stuff
as many seem to be projecting is there any credible fork that has some
following already that aims to basically be React but without those
elements as a focuspoint?
worble wrote 58 min ago:
There's always preact, which is pretty much a drop in react
replacement.
ontouchstart wrote 2 hours 4 min ago:
React 16 was released in 2017, the same year transformer-based models
was announced.
We can feel nostalgia but the world is moving.
It is hard to predict how everything will be in 5 years.
qgin wrote 2 hours 12 min ago:
I am always surprised to see the anti-Vercel stuff here. NextJS has
repeatedly solved every thing I wanted React to do beyond its
out-of-the-box fearures. You can pry NextJS from my cold, dead hands.
rglover wrote 2 hours 13 min ago:
If you just want tools that work/make it easy to build apps and
websites with JS (and you want direct access to the guy building them),
you may find what I built after leaving React/Next interesting [1]. I
built this because the creeping complexity and confusion of React's
APIs combined with the stress of building a SaaS w/ Next.js became a
giant ball of stress and time waste.
Feel free to jump in the Discord [2] with any questions. [1]
URI [1]: https://cheatcode.co/joystick
URI [2]: http://discord.cheatcode.co
mb2100 wrote 1 hour 47 min ago:
Welcome to the club! I built [1] after finding both Next.js and Astro
to be too complex for my simple needs.
URI [1]: https://mastrojs.github.io
nonethewiser wrote 2 hours 4 min ago:
I find it immediately off-putting that a I'd choose a framework based
on whether or not I'm building a SaaS. Maybe it streamlines certain
things but the lock-in to the frameworks set of features and way of
doing things feels like a bad decision.
rglover wrote 1 hour 21 min ago:
A SaaS is just the focus but it can build plain websites just fine.
IMO, it streamlines everything. But people have to get out of their
own way and try itânot form surface-level opinions from a quick
scroll. I'm actually shocked how few people will even try it. They
sit and bitch about React/Next, but when someone offers a solution,
they poo poo it (usually for superficial reasons) and then go back
to suffering. Joystick is for developers who are tired of that
cycle and just want to build something that just works (and they
actually understand why it works). Honestly, I'm surprised more
people don't trust my way of doing things and continue to walk on
to the kill floor that is corporate and VC-backed tech.
dzogchen wrote 2 hours 13 min ago:
Does this mean there is a chance we will get an ESM browser-compatible
build of React after 10 years?
antonyh wrote 2 hours 13 min ago:
Governance by mega-corporations working in a cartel. Having read this
recent article [ [1] ], I fail to see how this is a good thing.
Gatekeepers with self-interests at the heart of the decision making
process.
URI [1]: https://lithub.com/how-american-tech-cartels-use-apps-to-break...
azemetre wrote 1 hour 59 min ago:
It's extremely worrying on how they had to use a private "foundation"
rather than using existing, more democratic, organizations like
OpenJS foundation.
Don't expect user input, don't expect changes that go against their
wants over the community's needs, and don't expect things to get
better.
weinzierl wrote 2 hours 41 min ago:
Is there more information somewhere than in this short article, for
example a timeline or the planned legal form?
stevev wrote 2 hours 51 min ago:
Itâs natural for Vercel to have a strong influence on the project.
Thatâs what happens when a framework grows large and fragmented
without a defined board, group, or leadership focused on both short-
and long-term goals. At least now, with the foundation in place, there
are additional voices to help guide the project rather than letting it
move entirely in line with Vercelâs direction.
gettingoverit wrote 3 hours 25 min ago:
I should remind that in a similarly cheerful mood FB dumped support of
Jest and a bunch of other libraries. They have a long history of
killing successful projects.
Worse, Vercel is involved, and I literally don't remember anything good
about that company.
I'd recommend to be very cautious with such news, and use older
versions of React for the next couple of years.
pverheggen wrote 1 hour 20 min ago:
Vercel is already heavily involved, take a look at the core team: [1]
This announcement mentions they are separating business and technical
governance, I suspect they are trying to limit Vercel's influence,
and prevent them from taking it in a direction that only benefits
them.
URI [1]: https://react.dev/community/team
nonethewiser wrote 2 hours 3 min ago:
Jest is the most popular JS testing framework. It's wildly inaccurate
to say it was killed.
gettingoverit wrote 1 hour 12 min ago:
I think keeping it unsupported for a couple of years, and
reluctantly pushing it off to volunteers who barely have enough
technical experience to support it is quite close to "was killed".
Until recently Jest had a bug that made it crash due to sl (yes,
the famous steam locomotive) running under the hood. This gives a
hint at, ahem, the sophistication of its architecture.
The project is long in its EOL, and the only reason for its use is
inertia, the jQuery kind of it.
boredtofears wrote 34 min ago:
Any idea what people have generally moved on to? Currently using
jest but its definitely showing its warts often and is pretty
slow. Curious if there is an obvious successor.
AstroBen wrote 19 min ago:
I've had a really good experience with vitest
hungryhobbit wrote 21 min ago:
There's always Mocha.
pavel_lishin wrote 27 min ago:
Vitest is what people have been suggesting to me.
vermilingua wrote 29 min ago:
Vitest is the incumbent I would say, but there seems to be a
lot of momentum behind the runtime-builtin test runners
recently. Bun is gaining traction like nothing else, and node
has put a lot of work into the test builtins lately.
hungryhobbit wrote 22 min ago:
Node's test runner is a non-contender, at least right now.
If you've ever used any other test runner, you'll find Node's
is woefully inferior. I'd say "but maybe it will get
better", except I've seen the maintainer responses to several
issues, and it seems they are wedded to bad architectural
decisions that keep it that way.
azangru wrote 1 hour 33 min ago:
Looks to me it will be dead soon if they don't figure out how to
handle ESM imports. More and more libraries stop packaging commonjs
for their new versions. I've been bitten first by d3, then by
graphql-request (now graffle), then by msw, then by faker-js.
Faker-js, for god's sake! They write in their docs that since
version 10, they are incompatible with Jest [0]. Jest seems to be
going the way of Enzyme and dodo.
The maintainer of MSW has been screaming for years for people to
drop jest [1] [0] - [1] -
URI [1]: https://github.com/faker-js/faker/blob/428ff3328b4c4b13ec2...
URI [2]: https://x.com/kettanaito/status/1746165619731382351#m
iammrpayments wrote 2 hours 56 min ago:
They made it possible for Rich Harris to get paid while working on
Svelte. Not sure what will happen in the future though.
notyouraibot wrote 3 hours 27 min ago:
I'm disappointed that Vercel is a part of this foundation. NextJS is on
its way to its funeral, they have absolutely ruined it with things
nobody asked for or cares about. I have been working on a large scale
NextJS app which when I run locally consumes just over 8GB OF RAM on M4
Mac Mini. Brilliant. Slowly migrating the application to a Vite Based
React SPA with a dedicated Hono backend and life is already looking
already better.
Vipsy wrote 4 hours 0 min ago:
The new foundation could be a turning point for React, but whether it
truly decentralizes decision-making depends on how governance works in
practice, not just on the list of corporate sponsors. Open source
foundations have helped some projects thrive by formalizing community
input, but they can also be slow to adapt if board dynamics favor
stability over innovation. The real question is whether small developer
voices and radical ideas will shape React's future, or if practical
influence stays with the largest sponsors. Compared to one company's
oversight, a well-run foundation can make React less vulnerable to a
single vendor's agendaâbut only if its structures actively foster
broad participation and accountability. We'll see if React's evolution
speeds up or settles into consensus-driven conservatism.
SonOfLilit wrote 3 hours 57 min ago:
Are you implicitly complaining that React is not moving fast enough?
What the JS ecosystem needs is for some big players to CHILL a bit
and take backwards compat more seriously.
agos wrote 2 hours 35 min ago:
when something is moving orthogonally to where you would like it to
move, it might as well be not moving for you
phplovesong wrote 4 hours 8 min ago:
Its kind of amazing how big a single library (that does very little
really) has become.
React is obviously the "new jquery", and something else will come one
day. So many specially boot-camp devs are "react only" devs.
Scary stuff.
deliriumchn wrote 3 hours 22 min ago:
while jquery had a gajillion of exotic apis to do pretty much
everything, react is, frankly, pure js with handful of apis: jsx
(html with pure js), useState/useEffect/useMemo (rarely you need
more), and initial hydration function. Rest is utility libraries,
bundler, and all the wondeful things that brings you endless headache
and depression because without them fulfilling yet another business
req would take 10x more time
kode95 wrote 4 hours 3 min ago:
> React is obviously the "new jquery", and something else will come
one day.
"Something else" is already here and has been for a long time. Vue
and Svelte are both excellent alternatives.
gloosx wrote 3 hours 20 min ago:
They are not. Extending JavaScript with an XML-like syntax that
transpiles down to composable function calls feels far more
natural. In contrast, extending HTML with a template syntax feels
limiting and less intuitive in practice â thats why these
frameworks are unlikely to ever reach the same level of traction as
React.
Alex-C137 wrote 3 hours 7 min ago:
Hard disagree. React is only popular because large companies made
it so. There are few things that React is inherently better than
Vue and none of them are its bundle footprint, page load speeds,
nor the average time to learn one or the other.
Subjectively I am extremely in opposition to the fact that XML
anything with composable functions is more intuitive than HTML
templates by any stretch of the imagination.
gloosx wrote 2 hours 59 min ago:
I get your point, but to me it is about composition, not
popularity. Writing UI as pure functions of state feels far
more natural â recursion, higher-order patterns, dynamic
layouts, all come easily because React is just JavaScript. In
Vue or Svelte, recursion and logic feel bolted onto an HTML
templating layer, which makes complex patterns less fluid.
kode95 wrote 3 hours 12 min ago:
What feels more "natural" is likely to be influenced by what you
already know. I've always felt that JSX felt unnatural and Vue's
and Svelte's way of doing it feels more natural.
gloosx wrote 2 hours 51 min ago:
fair â what feels natural usually depends on what you are
used to. But even aside from preference, JSX aligns directly
with how JavaScript itself works. You are not learning a new
templating DSL â you just compose functions. That conceptual
unity is what makes React approach click for for so many.
lunarboy wrote 3 hours 47 min ago:
I come from mobile, and was surprised how nice svelte is. Felt so
much more familiar patterns than react
monooso wrote 3 hours 57 min ago:
I think the point is not that there aren't alternativesâthere
were plenty of jQuery alternativesâbut that React is the dominant
force, and this too shall pass.
warmjets222 wrote 23 min ago:
The alternative that eventually beat out jQuery was just better
native javascript, though.
schwartzworld wrote 3 hours 34 min ago:
React wonât topple for a while, because of none of the
alternatives are different enough. React solved a real problem
many developers faced by giving them a state management system
with a rendering engine, whereas you were likely to make surgical
cuts before in response to state change, you can now just write
your ui assuming the whole thing rerenders in response to changes
to that state. The component system also allowed for an easy way
of sharing code as dependencies. Vue, Svelte, Solid and the rest
have their individual pros and cons when compared to react, but
they are essentially different attempts to do the same thing.
You want to topple react, you need to solve a problem thatâs as
big as state management used to be in a way that react canât
also just copy/absorb, and you have to do it so well that
developers will push to use it at work. You need to have a ux as
clean as what React offers to its devs, and you probably need to
come close enough in benchmarks to not get instantly shot down.
philipallstar wrote 4 hours 3 min ago:
It's not scary. It's a pretty small API surface. Lots of time is
spent on component styling and all that stuff, which isn't
React-specific.
Web components tech such as Lit might be part of the future,
replacing JSX, and then React purely becomes a middleware tool for
DOM diffing and shuffling events up and data down.
joshkel wrote 2 hours 11 min ago:
Would you still say it's a small API surface? State, memos,
callbacks (which are just memo functions), effects, effect events,
reducers, context, external stores, special handling for any tags
that go in the ``, form actions, form status, action state,
activities, refs, imperative handles, transitions, optimistic
updates, deferred updates, suspense, server components, compiler,
SSR?
Or maybe it's a small enough API but a lot of concepts. Or maybe
I'm just grumpy that the days of "it's just a view layer" feel long
ago.
pyrale wrote 6 min ago:
> Or maybe I'm just grumpy that the days of "it's just a view
layer" feel long ago.
That abstraction was always leaky, in that it begged many more
questions that had to be answered.
Part of the appleal was that it was limited in the perimeter, and
part of the curent situation is that the community around
React-the-library created the tools to answer these other
questions, which means that React-the-ecosystem is much more
complex than React-the-lib.
philipallstar wrote 1 hour 46 min ago:
Your list has convinced me that my understanding of React is out
of date!
afavour wrote 3 hours 52 min ago:
IMO OP is correct that the bootcamp devs are scary, not React
itself.
Iâve interviewed a number of engineers who have very little grasp
of what the DOM is and how it works because React abstracts the
whole thing away. Server components are another are where some
niceties mean a bunch of developers arenât really understanding
whatâs going on with underlying HTTP requests.
While Reactâs API surface is small the average app will come with
a chunk of extra stuff: Redux, next.js, yadda yadda. People take
entire courses that never leave that bubble.
romanovcode wrote 4 hours 7 min ago:
> Scary stuff.
Why? When jQuery went away nothing happened. People just learned the
new frameworks.
hu3 wrote 3 hours 47 min ago:
I don't think jQuery went away.
And it might never unless browsers implement better DOM apis.
The current DOM API implementation reminds me of that quote:
"look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power"
kaoD wrote 4 hours 33 min ago:
After seeing all the comments here I'm a bit relieved.
I don't care about the CEO's political stance, but Vercel's involvement
with React has rubbed me the wrong way since the start of development
of RSC. The development was basically behind half-closed doors, pretty
much tied to Next.js (i.e. Vercel) and with zero specs except a high
level description of what they were and their public API.
I don't care that they were WIP: the community should've been involved,
not Vercel as a benevolent dictator guiding their design from start to
almost finish. Such a huge paradigm shift shouldn't have been dictated
by any particular entity... and IMO much less Next's team which I think
are prone to overengineering and bad decisions.
IIRC there were points in time (maybe even currently?) where you had to
use packages that were published to NPM but not even on any public
repo.
I love the idea of RSC but that's where my love ends.
I thought I was alone on this.
synergy20 wrote 2 hours 11 min ago:
i left for vue one year ago, life is much simpler and productive
seanclayton wrote 5 min ago:
Same, but I am pretty much sold on Svelte after getting a new job
using svelte (Shipping react in production since 2014).
k__ wrote 3 hours 40 min ago:
[flagged]
password54321 wrote 3 hours 13 min ago:
Increasingly bloated and complicated frameworks with intangible
benefits used for webpages that are now just training data for LLMs
is much more important.
DoctorOW wrote 4 hours 34 min ago:
Small tangent: I noticed the HN in the share menu is the only one in
color. They're unable to change it unless they host a copy of the icon
themselves (they're hotlinking [1] ). Surprised they don't have their
own CDN/icon font at Facebook scale.
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/y18.svg
cnity wrote 23 min ago:
You don't even need to "host" it per se, just include the icon source
in the webpage. It's 315B.
jaapz wrote 3 hours 24 min ago:
Weirdest part is they are hosting all the other icons themselves,
just not the HN one
h1fra wrote 5 hours 43 min ago:
That's good news for the project but having that many big corps in
charge will for sure continue to bloat the software
pimterry wrote 5 hours 49 min ago:
It feels like React generally has an ongoing trajectory towards
increasing complexity and features. For something that's effectively
become the standard for frontend that's unfortunate. It would be great
to have a simple reliable base, with extensions & addition complexity
layered on top or included optionally. This announcement doesn't fill
me with hope for that direction unfortunately, it mostly seems like
Vercel getting more control, and they're driving a lot of that
movement.
Being able to ignore parallel rendering, RSC, hooks, etc, and just
write simple code for simple sites again would be fantastic.
Unfortunately all the major competition I've seen seems so
significantly different that migrating any kind of non-trivial
application would basically be a full rewrite. Is Preact or similar
offering much promise here?
kumarvvr wrote 29 min ago:
I tried to wrap my head around hooks, to effectively use them, and
have a complete grip over the app, but I kept falling into the
"magic" pit.
Things work, But I no longer know how they work.
Frustrated, I shifted to angular with signals, and now my cognitive
load to understand data and events happening in the app are clearer
and I feel I know what exactly is happening.
Not sure if this feeling is common, of helplessness with react.
gaoshan wrote 2 hours 18 min ago:
Most companies don't really need the majority of React's power. There
is room for a low to mid level complexity library/framework to fill
the space that the majority of sites really need (like, that
brochureware site should be statically generated and needs none of
what React offers and the site that deals with dozens of requests per
minute can be greatly simplified). What we need is a low complexity
tool that has a fantastic DX. Of the many projects that deal with
this none has taken hold in the way that React has.
daemonologist wrote 2 hours 0 min ago:
Svelte 4, optionally with the static output mode ("adapter") fills
this role quite well.
(I'm not entirely sold on Svelte 5 for the same role - I think it
gives up some DX - although maybe I just like the thing I'm used
to.)
nurbl wrote 3 hours 0 min ago:
I don't have experience from any larger application, but from my
smaller usage Preact seems like a drop in replacement. It's been
compatible with the react libraries I've tried. It also works great
with ES modules. So for simple stuff, I think it's worth a try.
flowerlad wrote 3 hours 28 min ago:
Absolutely agree. Leave well enough alone. If they keep adding
features it is only going to get worse.
kobalsky wrote 3 hours 49 min ago:
> 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.
dibujaron wrote 3 hours 17 min ago:
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.
fleebee wrote 2 hours 26 min ago:
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.
flowerlad wrote 2 hours 49 min ago:
Also you may have to maintain code bases that donât use your
preferred subset.
And you may have to work with developers who have a different
preferred subset.
iamtheworstdev wrote 4 hours 3 min ago:
> It feels like React generally has an ongoing trajectory towards
increasing complexity and features. For something that's effectively
become the standard for frontend that's unfortunate.
Is that not every software development effort, ever? Isn't that why
"todo" apps, search engines, etc, constantly get "recreated". Live
long enough to become the enemy and get replaced by a bare bones app
that'll bloat itself into oblivion and repeat the cycle?
throw-10-8 wrote 1 hour 19 min ago:
No, there is an entire school of thinking that advocates the exact
opposite.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy
christophilus wrote 4 hours 9 min ago:
Preact is great. Itâs not 100% the same as React, but itâs close
enough and good enough and has been excellent for my use cases
(SPAs).
jwr wrote 5 hours 50 min ago:
Happy to see a clear path for React going forward. React is
under-appreciated in some circles of the fast-moving JavaScript world,
where people are somehow expected to rewrite all their code from
scratch every couple of years or so, after somebody starts shouting
"framework X is dead", and everybody starts focusing on the new
hotness. I'm not sure how that is economically viable, I know I
couldn't afford that kind of approach.
I have a Clojure/ClojureScript app using React that I've been
maintaining for the last 10 years. I don't use all the features of
React, in fact I could probably use a much smaller library â the
biggest advantage is that it provides a "re-render the UI based on app
state change" model that fits Clojure very well. But I'm very happy
that React is there and that it's been maintained with relatively
little code rewriting necessary over the years.
afavour wrote 3 hours 56 min ago:
Itâs funny, personally I regard React as one of the frameworks
requiring regular updates. So many teams that have spent so many
hours shifting from class components to hooks based onesâ¦
tshaddox wrote 47 min ago:
That seems like an impression you may want to update given the
years that have passed. Hooks are coming up on 7 years old, and
werenât a breaking change anyway.
IMO a better description than âone of the frameworks requiring
regular updatesâ would be âan old, stable framework that adds
new features every 5 years or so without breaking changes.â
daveidol wrote 2 hours 12 min ago:
We are still talking about class components these days? I havenât
even seen one in many years
nonethewiser wrote 2 hours 0 min ago:
Class components are criminally misunderstood. Most people cannot
articulate why you should or should not use them. I'm sure plenty
of informed people can give a good reason here, but I'm talking
about my experience in the wild. It mostly boils down to "Yuck"
and "It's not the new thing."
As it turns out you shouldn't use them because they were
essentially deprecated a long time ago. But in terms of comparing
the merits in a more theoretical sense, there are simply
tradeoffs between the two.
flowerlad wrote 3 hours 36 min ago:
Did that turn out to be a good idea? Hooks are much reviled for a
reason!
marcelr wrote 3 hours 51 min ago:
its important to note that it wasnât a breaking change, unlike
many other frameworks
backwards compatibility is underrated
Izkata wrote 3 hours 48 min ago:
Wasn't a breaking change, and that was introduced like 7 or 8
years ago, I think? Been kind of a long time in Javascript-land.
madeofpalk wrote 4 hours 6 min ago:
> React is under-appreciated in some circles of the fast-moving
JavaScript world, where people are somehow expected to rewrite all
their code from scratch every couple of years or so, after somebody
starts shouting "framework X is dead", and everybody starts focusing
on the new hotness.
Has this ever really been the case in the past 10 years?
darepublic wrote 17 min ago:
well ironically it happened when react came on to the scene. Many
react rewrite projects (from jquery with handlebar like templates,
angular 1 etc)
throw-10-8 wrote 2 hours 39 min ago:
No and I say it's actually the exact opposite.
Its gotten so bad that when I read FE dev I interpret it as "React
Dev".
tshaddox wrote 55 min ago:
Is that so bad though? The major alternatives to React are close
enough to React that a competent React dev wonât have much
troubling contributing. If you need to hire an expert in Vue or
Svelte or even React, you should probably put that in the job
description rather than hope that âFE devâ would somehow
convey what you want.
azemetre wrote 2 hours 33 min ago:
Really feels like react has held back frontend development. The
idea that everything on the web should be written in react is
baffling but I'm sure people thought similar thoughts when jquery
or angular were popular.
michalstanko wrote 1 hour 22 min ago:
>> Really feels like react has held back frontend development
Why? How?
>> but I'm sure people thought similar thoughts when jquery or
angular were popular
I loved jQuery back in the day, and it helped bringing some
native APIs to life thanks to its popularity.
threetonesun wrote 2 hours 8 min ago:
Forget the underlying language, the real shift was this idea
that every website should be a single page application, which
we are now moving away from again but seemingly everyone has
forgotten how to do it, so it's being done "the React way".
jitix wrote 2 hours 13 min ago:
This could be because of developer fatigue and the trend of
forcing backend devs to do fullstack.
Its very hard to keep up with the frequent changes to
programming models, new frameworks, CSS libraries (why the heck
are they soo many?!) when you also have to design O(Log n)
backends, IaC, Observability, LLMOps, etc.
I have come to a compromise and have started advocating for
React/Redux/TS/NextJS as the default CRUD application stack so
that I can focus on solving real CS problems in the backend
that Iâm passionate about.
azemetre wrote 2 hours 2 min ago:
But react is where developer fatigue is most endemic. Since
it only does one thing, that typically means you have to
import a dozen other libraries that are mostly "flavors of
the month" captured in time. You can easily tell when a react
project was started based solely on it's dependencies. This
is bad because it typically means no two react projects will
use the same dependencies.
These dependencies are the root of the issue.
FWIW, I've only ever professionally work with react on the
frontend. For nearly 10 years too. My first job I was doing
react.createElement() before classes were shortly introduced
afterwards.
It's time that we move on to something better, and the react
foundation being controlled by private entities while not
being an actual democratic foundation is a good omen of what
to expect.
throw-10-8 wrote 2 hours 28 min ago:
Agreed, its become its own terrarium like ecosystem at this
point.
tobr wrote 3 hours 55 min ago:
No, and not before that either. Itâs a bizarre thing to say,
honestly. React is used near universally, despite there being
alternatives that are better in almost every way. That is the
opposite of being under appreciated. Hype about a new technology,
deserved or not, doesnât mean that everyone is throwing their old
code away, especially not their jobby job code.
tshaddox wrote 1 hour 5 min ago:
React often gets lumped into general JavaScript hatred of the
form âthe entire ecosystem of tooling/frameworks/libraries
changes every few months.â Thatâs despite React existing for
one third the lifetime of the World Wide Web. React is older now
than jQuery was when React was first released.
fkyoureadthedoc wrote 3 hours 32 min ago:
I think it's because around 2015 or so there was a lot happening
with front end frameworks, and the sentiment comes from then and
people have just not updated their priors since.
AngularJS was pretty popular at the time, Angular 2 migration was
looming, backbone still existed, jQuery (standalone or paired
with both) was going strong, Polymer hit 1.0 and it looked like
Web Components might actually be something and useful, React was
gaining a lot of popularity, Vue was gaining a small amount of
popularity, svelte an even smaller amount, Meteor was somewhat
popular and had its own front end library.
Of course in addition to all that, traditional server rendered
sites were more popular then than now and there were even more
options there.
However, React quickly became pretty much the default. Not that
there's 0 churn there. The "right way" to do React has changed
quite a bit in the last decade. And early on before all the libs
people liked to glue together somewhat matured/settled it was
common to have to replace stuff that just got abandoned.
More than once I had to pick up someone's old unmaintained
project to do a bug fix only to find I couldn't even get the
project to install/run because it was in the pre auto lock file
era and nobody ever ran `npm shrinkwrap`
alsiola wrote 3 hours 36 min ago:
> the opposite of being under appreciated
> despite there being alternatives that are better in almost
every way.
This right here is the under appreciation. The new way to signal
to others on forums that you are a really really great dev seems
to be to bring up how much better some bizarro templating engine
that abuses a niche JS language feature is.
Izkata wrote 3 hours 39 min ago:
The "in some circles of the fast-moving Javascript world" is
important - they're not saying everyone or even most, they're
saying proponents of the "better" systems (who do rewrite
regularly) dismiss React's stability as unimportant or indicating
it's dead when it's not.
prhn wrote 3 hours 42 min ago:
Let's not conflate the two things that were said.
It is absolutely true that companies were rushing to rewrite
their code every few years when the new shiny JS library or
framework came out. I was there for it. There was a quick
transition from [nothing / mootools?] to jQuery to Backbone to
React, with a short Angular detour about 13 years ago. If you had
experience with the "new" framework you could pretty much get a
front-end gig anywhere with little friction. I rewrote many
codebases across multiple companies to Backbone during that time
per the request of engineering management.
Now, is React underappreciated? In the past 10 years or so I've
started to see a pattern of lack of appreciation for what it
brings to the table and the problems it solved. It is used near
universally because it was such a drastic improvement over
previous options that it was instantly adopted. But as we know,
adoption does not mean appreciation.
> React is used near universally, despite there being
alternatives that are better in almost every way.
Good example of under-appreciation.
accrual wrote 1 hour 58 min ago:
Mootools is still around! "Copyright © 2006-2025". I don't
know anyone who uses it, but glad it see it's still going.
URI [1]: https://mootools.net/core
tshaddox wrote 1 hour 4 min ago:
MooTools also features in the infamous SmooshGate:
URI [1]: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/smooshgate
tobr wrote 1 hour 59 min ago:
No, I was also around when React was new, moving to it from
tangles of jQuery and Backbone. I absolutely know React brought
several lasting innovations, in particular the component model,
and I do appreciate that step change in front-end development.
But other frameworks have taken those ideas and iterated on
them to make them more performant, less removed from the
platform, and generally nicer to work with. That is where we
are today.
I agree that there was a period where many organizations did
rewrite their apps from scratch, many of them switching to
React, but I think very few did it âevery couple of yearsâ,
and I think very few are doing it at all today (at least not
because of hype - of course there might always be other reasons
you do a big rewrite). We should not confuse excitement about
new technologies for widespread adoption, especially not in
replacing existing code in working codebases.
madeofpalk wrote 3 hours 22 min ago:
I read parent's comment as an assertion that the current
"fast-moving JavaScript world" expects everyone to rewrite
their app. Personally I've never seen this, but since React
became popular ~13+ years ago, I struggle to believe this has
actually been true for others in any meaningful way.
fkyoureadthedoc wrote 3 hours 25 min ago:
Having worked in both over the years the main technical thing
React had going for it over Vue, in my humble opinion, was much
better Typescript support. Otherwise they are both so similar
it comes down to personal preference.
However 0 of the typescript projects (front and back end) I've
worked one (unless I was there when they started) used strict
mode so the Typescript support was effectively wasted.
d--b wrote 6 hours 15 min ago:
Is it just me or does this feel like peak React?
throw-10-8 wrote 5 hours 12 min ago:
Peak react was React 16 imo.
quink wrote 5 hours 2 min ago:
Hooks were first introduced in 16.8. Make it 18 maybe?
halflife wrote 4 hours 29 min ago:
I think that that was the point
flowerlad wrote 3 hours 21 min ago:
Exactly!
azangru wrote 6 hours 16 min ago:
To anyone excited by this news, could they explain, like I'm five, what
is it that makes it exciting? Why would developers (or non-developers?)
care?
simpaticoder wrote 4 hours 23 min ago:
Marky (FB) and Vicky (Vercel) are rich kids and are spending their
tooth fairy money to buy every kid at your kindergarten a cool toy.
Some kids don't like the toy, but that's okay there are other toys.
Some other kids (and esp their parents) think this is terrible, that
Marky is being cheap and Vicky only wants control of the playground.
They don't like Marky and Vicky and try to hurt them every chance
they get.
azangru wrote 4 hours 16 min ago:
But every kid at my kindergarten already had the toy. Any time they
said npm install react, the new shiny toy was brought to them. I
thought that's exactly what mattered to the kids, the toy. What do
they care what shop the toy comes from or what Marky and Vicky are
up to?
cryptonym wrote 3 hours 55 min ago:
Soon current version of the toy will be deemed unsafe and start
catching fire. You'll have to get a new version of the toy, still
available easily but it'll only run on crazy expensive batteries
you can get from Vicky. Or you could try to build your own
batteries but specifications for those are hazardous,
undocumented and changes over time.
Also, for the new version of the toy you'll have to learn to play
a new game as the old way to play with it'll become half-working.
At least that's what parents are afraid of.
fragmede wrote 4 hours 0 min ago:
Because Markey called everyone dumbfucks back in 2004 and some
people are still butthurt about it, so Mommy and daddy really
don't like going to that particular store to buy things.
askonomm wrote 6 hours 17 min ago:
That's one way to sell a open source project I guess. Not only did
Vercel really fight to not have any mention on the React docs about
using React _without_ Vercel, but downright to using wording to imply
that if you do then you're using it wrong. All clearly states the
direction that Vercel is taking React. Soon enough it'll be Vercel-only
software.
darepublic wrote 10 min ago:
reminds me of "use effect considered harmful, instead use these
library hooks that call use effect behind the scenes".
Rapzid wrote 26 min ago:
Wasn't there push back to including Vite in the docs? Even when it
was clear Vite was the new defacto way to setup a React project?
askonomm wrote 14 min ago:
There was indeed. Took a whole bunch of us on GitHub to make them
finally add it.
theknarf wrote 3 hours 19 min ago:
Hopefully the foundation will help balance that.
tom1337 wrote 4 hours 35 min ago:
Yea Vercel being included in this also is a bummer to me - but
honestly if history told us anything if they are making some stupid
decisions, like completely vendor locking it, it wouldn't take long
until a community maintained fork will be created. Same story as
Valkey, OpenTofu, MariaDB, NextCloud and so on.
askonomm wrote 4 hours 9 min ago:
Oh yeah, and there already is (preact, for example). I'm not
worried about losing front-end SPA libraries. If anything, I'm just
annoyed at the endless greed of VC funded firms.
throw-10-8 wrote 6 hours 39 min ago:
Vercel being involved is a huge red flag.
NextJS is a pile of garbage, and their platform is absurdly expensive
and leans heavily on vendor lock in.
loliver666 wrote 2 hours 19 min ago:
I often read that Next.js sucks. Meanwhile I and many other devs I've
spoken to IRL find it does what we need it to do without any issues.
Ya'll just some haters.
arcatech wrote 1 hour 57 min ago:
Just because you didnât see the issues other people are
encountering, everybody elseâs experiences are invalid?
loliver666 wrote 1 hour 19 min ago:
I'm saying the impression you'd get of Next from this thread is
that it literally does not work. It works fine.
throw-10-8 wrote 2 hours 7 min ago:
See the various other comments for concrete examples of why nextjs
sucks and the team at vercel is incompetent when it comes to auth,
middleware, caching, and just generally maintaining a usable
framework without brutal migrations and api breakages.
They have made egregious mistakes that go far beyond "move fast and
break things" and well into "we should have the lawyers join this
call".
loliver666 wrote 1 hour 20 min ago:
Built 4 commercial projects with it now. Not had these issues.
SilverSlash wrote 4 hours 14 min ago:
What's a red flag is that there are 3 new accounts commenting on this
reply and all are in agreement supporting your view.
Edit: apparently there's some confusion about my comment. I neither
use, like, or support Next. I just found it suspicious that a bunch
of new accounts showed up making generic comments in support of OP,
which to me was a red flag.
brazukadev wrote 2 hours 15 min ago:
I could definitely have written that but my account is not that old
too.
whizzter wrote 3 hours 21 min ago:
Maybe people are afraid to speak up? I've gotten a fair bit of
backlash on my negative complaints about NextJS on Reddit, someone
even necro-posting on a months old reply then continuing
"debating".
I think a somewhat neutral summary (of someone still annoyed by
Vercel/Next) would be like this (Notice the distinctions between
Site and App, not always clear cut but a dividing line imho):
- React was created by FB to solve real technical issues as their
frontend became larger and more complex.
- Site creators liked it as it was one of the solutions of a real
issue of reconcilliation of state and view (that often wasn't so
bad in the big picture) but React was often a bit heavyweight, App
creators really loved it as state reconcilliation took away that
entire class of bugs that just became so much worse quickly as Apps
grew (and React allowed for more people to create larger apps).
(Angular and Vue has always done this also, they are parallel
developments)
- Pressure from those doing sites has always pushed development of
React to be "simpler", often good for most parties (even if I think
that Redux was mostly thrown overboard prematurely).
- Part of simplifications was bootstrapping, create-react-app
became one of the recommended ways to start projects (and was also
incorporated into other toolchains such as .NET templates)
- Heavy builds, disabled JavaScript and SEO issues was teetering
issues (especially for public site builders), not entirely sure of
the inspirations but Next did solve that (perhaps not always
entirely elegantly initially)
- React internals start to change to better support these
scenarios, nobody really has objections since changes in React has
seldomly been for the worse (functional components, hooks, etc).
Vercel gains traction as a "do-good" choice.
- After all troubles of OpenSSL, Node finally adopts OpenSSL 3.0
thus breaking create-react-app that had been "deprecated" by the
React team (it's easily shimmable but it sent people looking).
- People looking for options find that the only "official" way to
use React according to the site is to use Next, so many start
adopting it out of fear of being left behind again.
- The Next model however is quite different and tailored to "site"
builders and/or people running the full stack in JS
- React however is quite popular outside of the JS only world for
enterprise SPA and/or mobile apps where trying to shoehorn in a
Next "frontend-backend" becomes overkill and extra complexity. (We
used it for one or two projects but have now abandoned it for our
regular work).
- The React site is updated slightly, Vite and similar are now
mentioned but the perception damage is there and hasn't let go (and
last I checked using f.ex. Vite was not "recommended" as being an
inferior option to Next for React usage)
- A very popular option for CSS-in-JS (styled) becomes deprecated
due to React internals changing for Next and requiring significant
rework that the original author had no interest in (no really clear
successor with support across the board for Next, SPA and
React-Native scenarios hadn't appeared last we checked).
Now this is my perception of events and I'm pretty sure that I'm
not alone in this, the Next/React authors felt like it was the way
forward due previous feedback for those that hurt (site builders)
but probably misjudged or didn't appreciate how much React was used
in other workloads(apps) that got disturbed while they were
improving their thing.
That Vercel has managed to alienate people in other ways like
billing (or politics?) certainly doesn't seem to have helped
either.
throw-10-8 wrote 3 hours 9 min ago:
My experience is that a lot of people on this forum are afraid to
voice negative opinions on tools they use at work.
Seen a lot of people in my professional circles shit on
Next/Vercel over beers, but then go to work every day and bang
out Next because it's what their manager chose 5 years ago.
Vercel can only ride that wave until the people who hate their
product are the decision makers.
alsiola wrote 3 hours 33 min ago:
Been here seven years. Next is hot garbage and you couldn't pay me
enough to work with it.
cryptonym wrote 4 hours 3 min ago:
Old account. Not with the same words but I share concerns on
Vercel's involvement, even if it's not a new thing.
baby wrote 3 hours 6 min ago:
Old account here too, sharing my concerns about Vercel's
involvement too
throw-10-8 wrote 4 hours 8 min ago:
i make throwaways on this site regularly and use them until i say
something to piss dang off and get shadowbanned.
your comment would be a lot more interesting if you attempted to
pose a counterpoint besides "BOT!".
normie3000 wrote 4 hours 9 min ago:
Old account here, in support of the GP's view.
weego wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
It's just a tool. Are the people that run Makita terrible? Who knows,
I just use their tools to fix cars. I use tools to build apps for
businesses that pay me. There is far too much ideology based decision
making in tech. Just build stuff with it or not.
Far too many smart people are putting their energies into such
discussions that add a lot of drag to the process of society and
humanity moving forward for no net gain at all.
hshdhdhehd wrote 4 hours 46 min ago:
Oracle is just a tool. WordPress is just a tool. But you may care
about their involvement in something you use.
kode95 wrote 4 hours 55 min ago:
As someone who isn't too familiar with Next and Vercel (having
primarily used Nuxt, the Vue equivalent), it's helpful for me to
know what's going on in the React world. Discussions like the above
are actually helpful in terms of helping people choose between the
various frameworks and hosts.
throw-10-8 wrote 4 hours 59 min ago:
I don't use nextjs because it's a steaming pile of unmaintainable
black-box shit.
The CEO's politics are just icing on the cake.
rk06 wrote 5 hours 7 min ago:
that is your opinion, and is irrelevant to the choice. practically,
vercel is a company which is heavily invested in react and react's
future, so, they need to be present.
moreover, this entire initiative looks like a way to reduce vercel's
influence, so if you want to be mad, then be mad in 5 yrs, not now.
noodletheworld wrote 4 hours 2 min ago:
> vercel is a company which is heavily invested in
â¦people paying for react.
Which is fair, but do we have bend knee and suggest they have the
best interests of the react ecosystem at heart? They donât.
They are invested in: people using next.js and hosting it on
vercel.
If thatâs not what youâre doing, their interests probably
donât align with yours.
hshdhdhehd wrote 4 hours 36 min ago:
Like Microsoft was invested in Web standards in the ie6 days... for
their own interests. To own it.
peterspath wrote 2 hours 32 min ago:
Like chrome is doing nowadays
throw-10-8 wrote 4 hours 50 min ago:
It is also my opinion that 5 years from now Vercel will be out of
business and their customers will have moved on the next hype
driven VC cash laundry.
mohsen1 wrote 6 hours 19 min ago:
Also their CEO's picture with Bibi is showing their values
baobabKoodaa wrote 3 hours 42 min ago:
Oh, I see. So this critique of Vercels' tech is at least somewhat
influenced by politics, rather than tech.
throw-10-8 wrote 3 hours 24 min ago:
Not at all, they are two different critiques.
1. Vercel / Next are complete technical trash wrapped in
egregious vendor lock-in. This directly influences their desire
to steer the react foundation in a direction that aligns with
their roadmap for Vercel/Next.
2. Their CEO thought it would be a good idea to have a photo op
with perhaps the most controversial figure in world politics.
This just means he's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is and
likely needs a handler.
baobabKoodaa wrote 3 hours 19 min ago:
Just from your comments in this thread I'm going to venture a
guess that you support Palestine and oppose Israel. Correct,
yes?
And also, you want me to believe that your throwaway account's
"purely technical critique" of Vercel is unmotivated by
politics? Just a complete coincidence that the CEO is
politically opposed to your faction.
throw-10-8 wrote 3 hours 3 min ago:
I hated vercel and next long before Israel decided it was
their turn at genocide.
So yes, it is a complete coincidence that vercel/next is
garbage and that their CEO is cozy with fascists.
There are plenty of technical critiques of next in this
thread.
I would start by googling "NextJs auth middleware bypass" if
you would like concrete examples of their incompetency.
tipiirai wrote 5 hours 54 min ago:
Whoah. Wasn't aware that Guillermo Rauch openly embraces Benjamin
Netanyahu
hshdhdhehd wrote 4 hours 43 min ago:
Just looked it up
URI [1]: https://www.middleeasteye.net/trending/developers-drop-v...
igleria wrote 5 hours 17 min ago:
The people with money don't care, as the very next day Vercel got
a series F. That is funny tho because I remember him being pretty
anti-israel back in our High school on the long defunct
semi-official foropelle.com.ar he owned and managed.
He is a programming prodigy, and that's it. Not a nice person.
Nevertheless, my anecdote should only be taken with a grain of
salt... After all, the only person that probably has backups of
foropelle is Rauch himself. And who cares what a teenager had to
say back in 2006?
crummy wrote 6 hours 31 min ago:
I know Vercel has their fingers in a bunch of pies, but is there any
significant vendor locking? I worked at a place where we just put
nextJS in a docker container and hosted it ourselves, but maybe we
would have got more on Vercel?
maelito wrote 5 hours 36 min ago:
I migrated [1] from Vercel to Dokploy, everything is good and
simpler.
URI [1]: https://cartes.app
cryptonym wrote 6 hours 18 min ago:
Try to scale Next.js globally.
Try to keep up to date with new versions, changes in paradigms and
the way the output is rendered.
It's designed to be deployed on Vercel. Production-ready hosting
part of the Framework is not Open Source nor well documented. [1]
URI [1]: https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions/59167
URI [2]: https://www.netlify.com/blog/how-we-run-nextjs/
throw-10-8 wrote 6 hours 19 min ago:
running nextjs in docker is notoriously bug prone, there are
multiple GH issues about this with no real resolution
the official recommendation we got was to just run it on vercel
I would go as far to say that nextjs is not self-hostable in its
current state if you expect high traffic and low latency.
nicce wrote 6 hours 0 min ago:
They have neglected many issues which would help on self-hosting
until the public cry was big enough.
azangru wrote 6 hours 31 min ago:
Vercel employs maybe half [correction, maybe a quarter] of the React
core team. For example, at the keynote at React Conf 2025, it was
mentioned that Andrew Clark, who, if I am not mistaken, is employed
by Vercel, worked on resolving the rendering issue of React that was
blocking the release of React 19 after it was discovered in the
release candidate.
Vercel and Next.js have been the main testing ground during the
development of React server components as well.
How much has Vercel contributed to the development of react over the
past years?
throw-10-8 wrote 6 hours 10 min ago:
Vercel is the primary driver of react SSR / server components,
which has also led to an explosion of complexity in react and has
made it less useful as a composable library imo.
The last truly useful react feature for me was error boundaries in
React 16 (2017?) and I think hooks was react 16 too?
These days if I need ui components for an existing SSR app I just
use web components or lightweight libs like mithril.
brazukadev wrote 2 hours 17 min ago:
> Vercel is the primary driver of react SSR / server components,
which has also led to an explosion of complexity
It also alienated a huge part of the userbase that decided to
move away from React.
JSR_FDED wrote 5 hours 29 min ago:
Mithril rocks. Iâve been blissfully ignoring the new hotness
for years.
iamsaitam wrote 6 hours 36 min ago:
Why is NextJS a pile of garbage?
throwaway77385 wrote 5 hours 56 min ago:
If there is only one thing you take from my post, then look up
"NextJS middleware auth bypass" or something along those lines.
Have fun reading about that and then never touch NextJS or anything
Vercel ever again.
I won't repeat what the sibling poster said, but I can tell you,
I've been using NextJS from v12-v15 and in that time we've had:
- The catastrophic (and, at the time, UNDOCUMENTED) "aggressive,
opt-out caching of all fetch calls", which confused the living
daylights out of everyone who suddenly couldn't retrieve updated
data from their servers. Like, don't override a native JS function
that's supposed to work in an expected way, with black-box magic
that adds caching behaviour that then needs to be overriden _per
route_ with directives on each route. Cache headers can be added to
fetch calls and are easy to configure globally via axios if needed.
If you're going to do black magic, call it "nextfetch" or something
- The app router / page router transition was shockingly badly
handled, with so much missing documentation around dynamic routes
- I don't know how many different ways of fetching / setting
metadata / -related techniques I've had to learn by now. It seems
to change all the time. BUT, that isn't the worst part....the worst
part was / is:
- You couldn't, for the longest time, fetch metadata for a page
without duplicating fetch requests. I think this is where their
fetch-deduping thing came from. But again, black-box magic on a
native JS function with very inconsistent behaviour, so for a
while, all pages in our app just had to make two fetch calls per
page that needed specific metadata added to the
- Vercel as a platform not allowing to set billing limits (have fun
with your DDoS that they don't recognise as such)
- Middleware is one file. That's what you get. No chaining,
nothing. One god-function for everything. Just think about the
anti-pattern that is
- I don't know whether it's clever or terrible, but if you want to
add a sitemap, you do so by defining a route by creating a folder
called sitemap.xml (yes, a directory), where you then put your
route.ts which is in keeping with the way the new router should
work. But somehow it just doesn't sit right with me. Folders with
file extensions. But it also adds a lot of ability to make the
sitemap highly customisable and dynamic, so maybe it's ok
- You suddenly needed to start awaiting url params, cookies, etc.
which is sort of fine, but was a huge change causing warnings all
over the compiler for months and months
Anyway, those are just a few things off the top off my head. I
already find React to be quite counter-intuitive and
non-deterministic, but NextJS just adds a layer of pain on top with
very, very few advantages.
I am dying to get my hands on an alternative, but also don't want
to rebuild all of the apps I built when I was still optimistic
about NextJS.
paweladamczuk wrote 4 hours 7 min ago:
As a mostly-backend dev I stumbled across the "metadata in "
issue in my first hour of using NextJS for a toy project.
I kept wondering if there's something wrong with me or if a
framework recommended in so many places can really be this
shitty, until I read your comment.
dbbk wrote 5 hours 48 min ago:
I'd just ask an AI model to move everything over to TanStack
Start and see if it works
throw-10-8 wrote 5 hours 30 min ago:
And what do you do next when it doesn't?
fragmede wrote 4 hours 13 min ago:
Do it by hand like the olden days of yester-last-week before
Sonnet 4.5?
throw-10-8 wrote 3 hours 46 min ago:
By hand? Ok Grandpa.
I only vibe code in my Metaverse open office by thinking
with my Beta NeuralLink.
fragmede wrote 3 hours 40 min ago:
I tried that once. Had to downgrade my brain firmware to
get syntax highlighting back.
throw-10-8 wrote 5 hours 50 min ago:
Oh man I forget about their "middleware".
Whoever implemented that has no idea how middleware is supposed
to work.
throw-10-8 wrote 6 hours 22 min ago:
- fragile under load and very difficult to debug SSR issues
- inconsistent behavior between hosted and self hosted versions of
the same code
- horrible build times, like laughably bad multi-minute builds for
trivial code bases
- crappy directory based routing system with lots of weird gotchas
- schizo identity JAMstack -> serverless -> ssr -> now its microvms
+ ai
- multiple hilariously long running GH issues where the dev team is
thrashing around trying to debug their own black box framework
- "framework" that barely provides any of the primitives necessary
to build web apps
- major breaking changes around core features like routing that
require painful migrations
- general sloppiness, churn, and insecurity that comes from being
part of the nodejs ecosystem
Thats not even getting into all of the shady patterns vercel uses
to lock you into their overpriced hosting.
I've been a part of multiple teams that decided to build apps using
NextJS, and while the FE is not my responsibility I typically got
pulled in to help troubleshoot random issues. It was a complete
waste of time in almost every case, and in one case resulted in the
entire FE team being let go because they were unable to ship
anything on time.
loliver666 wrote 2 hours 17 min ago:
I've been building loads of stuff with it for years and never
experienced any of this.
Sounds like a YOU problem.
throw-10-8 wrote 1 hour 43 min ago:
multiple other comments sharing my experience and expanding on
it.
loliver666 wrote 1 hour 19 min ago:
If its so crappy how's it so popular?
throw-10-8 wrote 49 min ago:
They spend a lot of money on marketing.
davedx wrote 5 hours 26 min ago:
Yeah matches my experience. Itâs just so much complexity just
to get SSR. Iâve worked at places that used it for b2b SaaS
apps with no public web part, so the SSR is just a big
liability⦠whyyyyy
flowerlad wrote 3 hours 22 min ago:
I use it for my web site where SSR is critical for SEO. For app
development I donât use Nextjs. I think it is designed for
web sites (as opposed to web apps) and it is great for this
purpose
beanjuiceII wrote 2 hours 32 min ago:
yep this is how i use it and it has worked out really
great...sometimes i wonder what people try to do that they
have all these issues
throw-10-8 wrote 5 hours 21 min ago:
Reminds me of VC backed framework Meteor that was attempting to
do full stack JS and collapsed under its own tech debt.
fkyoureadthedoc wrote 3 hours 13 min ago:
I'd honestly love to use something that delivered on Meteor's
goals. Next.js ain't it though lol.
throw-10-8 wrote 2 hours 56 min ago:
I was pretty involved in their stack back in the day, it
was a good alternative to Django at the time for simple
plug and play admin apps, and to this day i think they had
the simplest OAuth setup of any framework I've used.
The real issues were the super tight coupling with MongoDB
and their decision to roll their own package ecosystem
instead of just using npm from day one.
dbbk wrote 5 hours 50 min ago:
Not to mention their braindead decision to aggressively cache
everything as much as possible, which they're now trying to undo,
but still haven't shipped.
molszanski wrote 5 hours 55 min ago:
Try Astro my friend. React SSR with none of that next bs
alsiola wrote 3 hours 30 min ago:
Used Astro for a pro bono project. Found it fantastic, well
documented, provides solutions for the hard parts, gets out of
the way for the easy parts. Documentation is well written, but
I find I don't need it much because mostly it works how I would
expect.
fuzzy_biscuit wrote 4 hours 20 min ago:
Astro is not tied to React. You can choose your framework.
WA wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
You lost me at React SSR. That is part of the complexity bs.
React is a lib for mapping state to the DOM. There's no DOM on
the server. So React on the server is 95% useless for that
purpose and hence, overengineered to create a bit of HTML and
send it down the wire.
I like the simplicity of Hono and use their html helper to
write good old HTML that is send to the client.
deepriverfish wrote 2 hours 16 min ago:
how do you manage the application state with Hono? I saw
their home page and it didn't mention anything about it.
WA wrote 1 hour 4 min ago:
Hono is a server-side framework like Express. So same way
like you handle application state in most server-side
multi-page web apps: You just fetch whatever you need from
the DB per request.
"State management" really isn't that much of an issue on
the server. Only on clients, when you need to map state
changes to DOM updates.
throw-10-8 wrote 4 hours 48 min ago:
This is the vercelization of react peeking through, that
people even associate react with ssr is an anti-pattern.
throw-10-8 wrote 5 hours 46 min ago:
I've heard good things, what would you say is the killer
reasons to justify being the nodejs ecosystem vs something more
purpose built for ssr like php?
tacker2000 wrote 6 hours 28 min ago:
Itâs VC funded, overengineered crap, specifically designed to
push people into using their overpriced hosting.
I hope this isnt the way that React as a whole will go in the end.
But fortunately there are enough alternatives about.
matsemann wrote 6 hours 43 min ago:
Oh man, having Vercel on the board is a bummer. Not only because they
want to take React a way I disagree with, but it's clear that the CEO
is on the wrong side of history in other matters as well (lots of
recent drama).
veeti wrote 5 hours 12 min ago:
Do you believe board members Meta, Amazon or Microsoft and their
CEO's are on the right side?
throw-10-8 wrote 4 hours 47 min ago:
Their financial interest in react is less blatant.
Vercel wants to own React, its been obvious about it for years now.
azangru wrote 6 hours 37 min ago:
I am baffled by this take that I've been seeing all over the internet
recently. A CEO is a person. He is human. Can't a human be on the
wrong side of history on various matters, and what does it matter if
he is? Can't he still do a decent job (whatever it is that CEOs do)?
Why do we expect random entrepreneurs, celebrities, engineers, and so
on to also be moral authorities or role models?
throw-10-8 wrote 5 hours 17 min ago:
I don't think it's out of line to refuse to support companies where
the CEO buddy up to fascists.
marknutter wrote 33 min ago:
You're all over this thread smearing people with the term
"fascist". You do more to hurt your cause with histrionics like
that than you understand.
azangru wrote 4 hours 59 min ago:
It's just that if I were using Vercel or Next.js (which I don't),
I would be viewing my relationship with Vercel on a solely
transactional basis. If they were giving away for free something
that I needed (React or Next), I would take it. If they were
selling something that I needed (Vercel hosting, if I were
reckless enough to tie myself to it), I would pay for the
service. If they charged too much for the service, I would
investigate alternatives. It wouldn't enter my mind that I were
"supporting" them. I would rather imagine that they were
"supporting" me. And I wouldn't give a monkey's who they have for
a CEO.
tock wrote 4 hours 25 min ago:
Do you think a person of Palestinian origin should also
continue seeing their relationship with Vercel on a solely
transactional basis? Given that their families are likely
affected and Vercel's CEO publicly supports it? I'm just trying
to point out why people might have a different view on this.
azangru wrote 2 hours 40 min ago:
I can't, of course, pretend to know what goes on in the mind
of such a person; and of course I accept that people have
different views; this is very plain to see. What I lament is
that people with those views insist that everyone should cut
ties with people with other views, rather than accepting that
different people may have different views.
Let me give you a couple of different examples for
comparison. Github blocked all users from Iran. Pnpm cut all
traffic from Russian ips, whereas Linus Torvalds affirmed the
removal of Russian maintainers of the Linux kernel. These are
real adversarial actions, the like of which could impact my
decisions about a company or a technology, if I were on the
receiving end of those. Cowtowing to people in power and
taking photos with hateful people is just an undignified
behavior that is ultimately just noise.
tock wrote 2 hours 25 min ago:
> What I lament is that people with those views insist that
everyone should cut ties with people with other views,
rather than accepting that different people may have
different views.
It's only natural to think that way because these
particular decisions are based on ones moral framework. It
isn't like choosing a favourite tea. People will be pissed
at each other when moral frameworks don't match.
> Cowtowing to people in power and taking photos with
hateful people is just repulsive noise.
It comes down to what you said before. People have
different views. It's noise to you. It isn't noise to
others.
throw-10-8 wrote 4 hours 46 min ago:
That is known as "ignorant bliss".
nicce wrote 5 hours 56 min ago:
> A CEO is a person. He is human. Can't a human be on the wrong
side of history on various matters, and what does it matter if he
is? Can't he still do a decent job (whatever it is that CEOs do)?
Why do we expect random entrepreneurs, celebrities, engineers, and
so on to also be moral authorities or role models?
Exactly, it is a human behind the company that does every decision.
Company is just legal shield. Every decision is affected by what
they really are or think.
azangru wrote 5 hours 46 min ago:
> Every decision is affected by what they really are or think.
This is called micromanagement :-)
I am sure there are organizations where the actual work that
people do day to day is unaffected by who the people at the top
are or what they think on matters other than the business (people
at the top are often rather unpleasant anyway). I can't say
whether such organizations are common or whether Vercel is one;
but I believe I worked at such.
nicce wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
Most people in the company do what they are told to, because
they are there to get money for the living. That is just about
shifting responsibility to the upper level in hierarchy. So
they are definitely affected by the decisions of the upper
management.
Whenever there is a decisions to be made about increasing
profits, for example, someone needs to judge based on moral
weight. Outsource to India? Do something gray and think legal
matters later? Maybe there is no moral, and the company should
operate based on the risk assessment of fines breaking the law
and negative PR. In all cases, "what person is", highly
influences the outcome of these decisions.
azangru wrote 4 hours 38 min ago:
In a well-functioning organization, the upper management set
the vision and the goals for the company and for the
product(s); and then let the people who do the actual work
use their best judgement to move towards those goals. The
upper management, of course, may decide that it would be more
profitable to lay off the employees and to outsource to
India; and that, of course, would have a direct impact on the
work of those at the lower rungs; but I don't think that is
the kind of concern that people have when they complain about
Vercel's CEO.
matsemann wrote 6 hours 13 min ago:
If you're baffled and you're seeing it all over the internet, could
it be that you're the one with the wrong take? Food for thought.
000ooo000 wrote 6 hours 4 min ago:
Downright silly thing to say given how astroturfed the internet
is in 2025
azangru wrote 6 hours 10 min ago:
Sure :-) Being baffled doesn't make one right. Nor, for that
matter, does sharing a common viewpoint.
shafyy wrote 6 hours 29 min ago:
This is always the same age-old discussion: Can you separate the
art from the arists? And unsurprisingly, different people have
different views on it. Even if you disagree, you should be able to
understand why people don't want to use a product if their usage of
that product makes the owner and CEO more powerful (and they think
them being more powerful is a bad thing for humanity).
Edit to add a simple example:
Musk's wealth is mostly tied up in Tesla -> You think Musk uses his
wealth to wield political power, political power that makes the
world a worse place -> You still think Teslas are good cars -> Even
though you think that, you don't want to spend your money on buying
a Tesla, because this will make Musk more wealthly -> Start at the
beginning
larnon wrote 5 hours 7 min ago:
It is irrelevant whether we can separate the art from the artist,
especially in this matter, when both the art and the artist are
bad.
Squarex wrote 7 hours 9 min ago:
Does this make React more or less dependend on Vercel?
throw-10-8 wrote 6 hours 38 min ago:
More, they are part of the foundation.
azangru wrote 6 hours 19 min ago:
According to the React team page [0], five members of the team work
at Vercel. This has been the case for several years. Vercel has
been a major contributor in the development of React. How does the
creation of the foundation make React more dependent on Vercel?
[0] -
URI [1]: https://react.dev/community/team
cryptonym wrote 6 hours 11 min ago:
Isn't the foundation a formal way for meta to step-out and let
others take/share ownership?
a1371 wrote 7 hours 18 min ago:
This sound like positive news for the Dev community. I can imagine it
took a lot of patience and intention to get Meta onboard with this.
disillusioned wrote 7 hours 27 min ago:
Is it me, or does $600,000 a year (presuming that $3M is over the 5
year period) seem a bit of a weak contribution from a company with a
$1.8 trillion market cap that's regularly making $100M-$250M TC pay
packages for AI scientists?
Like, I get that nothing is _owed_ here, but this feels like more of
the same tragedy of the commons open source problem we see: tools that
millions of apps depend on, barely propped up, and in this case, the
child of a megacorporation that could easily create a proper evergreen
endowment rather than a milquetoast token contribution to save face.
Or should we just be grateful?
nothrowaways wrote 2 hours 52 min ago:
Multiply this by the number of multi billion mc companies that are
built with it
nothrowaways wrote 2 hours 52 min ago:
Multiply this by the number of multi billion mc companies that are
built on it
theknarf wrote 3 hours 20 min ago:
The post said they would also still pay for their own internal team
that would keep contributing code to React, so it feels more like
their throwing in $600k in addition to what they already do. And they
have brought inn other companies who hopefully also contribute money,
seems like a lot more of an healthy situation than before.
rs186 wrote 5 hours 33 min ago:
Most open source projects receive $0 a year from companies that use
them.
mythz wrote 6 hours 28 min ago:
I don't understand the entitlement here?
Somehow because Meta has released a popular OSS library and dedicated
over 10 years of engineering resources to it (that has generated
immense value for the wider ecosystem), that they should've shelled
out more than the $3M they're contributing in order to give its
ownership away to a non-profit.
Maybe it's just me but I think they've contributed more than enough.
I'm grateful for what they've already contributed and anything else
they choose to contribute in future.
1dom wrote 3 hours 25 min ago:
You're right, $3million is a lot for an open source project, with
no other context.
But in the context of who that $3million is coming from, how much
they have available, how much responsibility they have for the
state of it, and how much value it provides to everyone who isn't
them, I think it's fair some people might have expected a little
more.
veidr wrote 2 hours 25 min ago:
I might have expected $1M/year, not $0.6M/year, just because it
sounds cooler, but... OTOH, is there any analogous project that
was better supported? Maybe, but I can't think of one...
lesuorac wrote 2 hours 39 min ago:
But why?
If this went the other way where say FaceBook let people freely
create accounts and talk to everybody and then later on either
charged 10$/month, plastered the site with ads, or started to
selling user data people would be upset about a bait and switch.
If you release something for free as you shouldn't be expected
compensation for it. People also shouldn't expect anything beyond
the terms that you've released it underneath as well.
cap11235 wrote 37 min ago:
Right! As long as the license is obeyed, who are you to
complain? If the original developer has a problem with the
results of something like the MIT License, well, they chose
that, and licensing choices are very extensively documented in
news.
Pro-tip: LICENSE files are just text! you can edit them. The
license is the license, and if someone fucks that up, well,
they fucked up. Don't want Amazon to use your lib? Just say
that. I have very little pity for those that complain about
this sort of thing. "Gratitude" has little legal standing, and
expecting a corporation to be ethical is absurd as apologizing
to your tapeworm.
If you really want a non-corporate license, there is always
Baba Yaga, which no corporation's lawyers will want to touch.
URI [1]: https://smallandnearlysilent.com/baba-yaga/LICENSE.txt
wslh wrote 4 hours 1 min ago:
I think once the React community engine is working you need less
budget because of third-party contributions.
gampleman wrote 7 hours 15 min ago:
They also have a team of full time react devs they are paying for.
That seems to me more than sufficient.
$600,000/year just to run a governance board and organize a
conference seems extraordinarily generous to me. In fact I think it's
more likely the $3M is more likely to form an endowment for the
foundation that will fund it's expenses running forward.
flowerlad wrote 3 hours 33 min ago:
> They also have a team of full time react devs they are paying
for.
For now. My guess is they will be included in the next round of
layoffs. Money for $100 Million pay packages for AI researchers has
to come from somewhere!
philipwhiuk wrote 7 hours 23 min ago:
> dedicated engineering support
is probably worth more in practice. The $3m will basically just cover
'founding the foundation' I guess.
I do wonder whether this is a sign Facebook may no longer develop new
stuff in React.
physicsguy wrote 7 hours 23 min ago:
How do you value what they already put into it?
esperent wrote 7 hours 14 min ago:
Let's round their yearly revenue at around $160 billion, then
assume they've spent $3 million a year on React. That would put the
cost at 0.002% of revenue, or to put it another way, if they
dedicated just 1% of revenue to philanthropy, they could fund 500
React sized projects indefinitely.
flowerlad wrote 3 hours 30 min ago:
Zuckerberg doesnât have a good track record with philanthropy
URI [1]: https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/25/tech/chan-zuckerberg-prim...
throw-10-8 wrote 2 hours 36 min ago:
Didn't Meta donate $1m to Trumps bribery fund?
nicce wrote 7 hours 23 min ago:
I guess Vercel does the most lifting in non-native React these days?
Didnât they hire the core developers?
fcanesin wrote 7 hours 18 min ago:
this, Vercel is at ~10B valuation with a business built atop React
- they should and will probably take more of Meta space as stewards
for it.
brazukadev wrote 6 hours 44 min ago:
That is exactly why I stopped using React 2 years ago
BoorishBears wrote 7 hours 12 min ago:
Please no. They don't have the best interests of React in mind.
They threw the resources behind RSC to make React, a framework
for frontend reactivity, force opt-in for frontend reactivity.
Meta is needed more than ever at this point, before React fully
becomes a framework for burning compute on Vercel's infra.
Rapzid wrote 24 min ago:
Because Vercel makes money when components are rendered server
side not client side.
I know almost nobody that even uses server side components.
It's right out if your backend isn't node..
karimf wrote 6 hours 57 min ago:
I agree with this. Iâd prefer to have Meta be the steward for
React instead of Vercel because Meta does not have a conflict
of interest.
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