Posts » When I first saw React.js
It was back in 2014. I lived in London at the time and I attended a meeting (was it London’s Web Developers Users Group?) where a person from Facebook presented what was an early version of React.js.
Thruth to be told, we (the audience) weren’t amused. We shared many laughs when hearing about hydration, reactivity, etc. Most of the guys in the audience were in fact older than me and possibly seen the idea as a gimick. Something that will never catch on.
At the time I had my first startup coded top to bottom as a Single Page Application and already 5 years of experience with the idea, knowing most of it’s pros and cons, countless hours spent reimplementing what works natively in the browser. I knew that wasn’t the way to build web apps.
But the world thought differently. Fast forward 10 years and there’s a whole generation of web developers who don’t know the basics of the web, only overly convoluted way of JS frameworks.
And that’s bad. We had something simple that worked and swapped it for something complex that brings little to the table.
But everyone has a right to their opinion. If client side JS frameworks work for you then fine. Have fun using them.
I have already opted out, went with simpler solutions that make my work so much easier and myself more productive.