I agree that all frameworks require learning framework-specific concepts, but I think there's a meaningful difference in what you need to know and how that knowledge transfers.
With Backbone, jQuery, or vanilla JavaScript, you're learning DOM APIs, event patterns, and explicit state management. These are things that are visible, inspectable, and fundamentally close to the platform. When something breaks, you can pop open devtools, see the actual DOM, trace the event handlers, and understand what's happening. The knowledge you gain is transferable. It's about how the web platform actually works.
With React, you're learning abstractions on top of abstractions: virtual DOM diffing, reconciliation algorithms, why objects in dependency arrays cause infinite loops, why your click handler sees stale state, why your input mysteriously cleared itself. This is React-specific magic that doesn't transfer. It's knowledge about how to work around React's mental model, not knowledge about how the web works.
You mention that batching and DOM reconciliation are solvable problems that justify React's complexity. But the article's point is that for most apps -- not Facebook-scale apps with 1,000 components on one page, but normal CRUD apps -- those problems can be solved with simpler patterns and conventions. We don't need a virtual DOM and a sophisticated reconciliation algorithm to build a form validator.
The real question isn't "does React solve problems?" It's "does React's complexity match the complexity of the problems most developers are actually solving?"
> The real question isn't "does React solve problems?" It's "does React's complexity match the complexity of the problems most developers are actually solving?"
Kind of disrespectful to reply to valid criticism of your AI slop article with more AI slop. Write like a human being man, what’s the point?
I agree that all frameworks require learning framework-specific concepts, but I think there's a meaningful difference in what you need to know and how that knowledge transfers.
With Backbone, jQuery, or vanilla JavaScript, you're learning DOM APIs, event patterns, and explicit state management. These are things that are visible, inspectable, and fundamentally close to the platform. When something breaks, you can pop open devtools, see the actual DOM, trace the event handlers, and understand what's happening. The knowledge you gain is transferable. It's about how the web platform actually works.
With React, you're learning abstractions on top of abstractions: virtual DOM diffing, reconciliation algorithms, why objects in dependency arrays cause infinite loops, why your click handler sees stale state, why your input mysteriously cleared itself. This is React-specific magic that doesn't transfer. It's knowledge about how to work around React's mental model, not knowledge about how the web works.
You mention that batching and DOM reconciliation are solvable problems that justify React's complexity. But the article's point is that for most apps -- not Facebook-scale apps with 1,000 components on one page, but normal CRUD apps -- those problems can be solved with simpler patterns and conventions. We don't need a virtual DOM and a sophisticated reconciliation algorithm to build a form validator.
The real question isn't "does React solve problems?" It's "does React's complexity match the complexity of the problems most developers are actually solving?"