Member-only story
Before we even get started I can already hear you pounding away at your keyboards writing your angry response. I would ask that you read my full explanation before going off at me in the comments. I really want to emphasize that I’m not trying to attack you personally because you use React or like React. However, what I am trying to say is that I think that React leaves a lot to be desired. What I want to do is explore the pain points and detail why I think React is an overall flawed library.
It’s mostly hype
In the business world of upper managers React has become something of a buzzword. I have worked for several companies that have had upper managers that decided that every front-end is going to use React for no other reason than they think it’s popular. Right away whenever you have non-technical upper managers making development decisions you know nothing good is going to come out of it. While React may be popular, I don’t think you can say that it’s the right thing to use based ONLY on its popularity.
Why would upper management be making these decisions? Well, they figure that since React is popular it must be easy to hire React developers. While yes, that is indeed true, it doesn’t mean it’s any more difficult to hire front-end developers with other skills as well. I also think any developer worth their salt should be able to adapt and learn another framework or library. This is entirely anecdotal, but when I got my first job working with React I had 0 experience using it and now I’ve been using it at work for the last 3 years or so.
In short, let developers pick their own tools. If it’s React good, but if it’s not you have to trust the people you hired to do the job. What I’m going to be talking about mostly is how I think React is a really bad choice for medium to large teams and complex applications.
React works best when you’re working alone
One of the reasons people love React when they’re making a personal project is because you can kind of do whatever you want. It’s a pretty free-form library that lets you kind of build what you want how you want. If you’re an experienced developer and have a personal project you’re hacking away at and use React it’s probably worked out pretty well for you.
