{"slug": "react", "name": "React", "category": "dev-libs", "category_name": "Libraries and frameworks", "description": "Open-source JavaScript library for building user interfaces from reusable components.", "recommenders": 27, "commenters": 91, "warners": 26, "score": 11.76, "rising": -0.87, "first": "2025-11-06", "latest": "2026-10-21", "why": "Liked for building complex, interactive UIs out of composable components, backed by a large ecosystem that suits AI-assisted coding.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 27, "neutral": 36, "compare": 2, "warn": 27}, "spark": [0, 4, 2, 0, 1, 1, 3, 3, 6, 2, 0, 5], "listed": true, "loved": ["Interactive UIs", "Developer experience"], "caveat": "Complexity and bloat", "short_quote": "React was one of those ways of building software that gave me back the giddy excitement I had learning Visual Basic as a kid.", "icon": true, "domain": "react.dev", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://react.dev", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["React"], "verdict": [{"text": "Liked for building complex, interactive UIs", "cites": [{"id": 772412864, "item_id": 48275804, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48275804", "by": "zarzavat", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "React is really, really good at the thing it was designed for: building interactive UIs.", "excerpt": "People hate on React because it's popular. That popularity alienates people whose use cases aren't served well by React and they wonder what the fuss is about. But React is really, really good at the thing it was designed for: building interactive UIs. You can even build native apps. Can you build a native app in htmx? Most of the alternatives to React are simplifying alternatives. They aim to take complexity away in", "context": "", "use_case": "interactive UIs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Does Anybody Actually Like React?"}, {"id": 775684736, "item_id": 48480296, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48480296", "by": "fiedzia", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "There is a reason we use React today - if you want dynamic and complex site, HTML is PITA to work with.", "excerpt": "There is a reason we use React today - if you want dynamic and complex site, HTML is PITA to work with. Either you reload everything on any change (not good), or end up with a maze of partial reloads in event handlers (not good either). It was done, it was bad, React (and similar frameworks) was the solution. If you don't need complexity of React, fine, use HTML. But if you do, who can guarantee that 5 min later some", "context": "", "use_case": "dynamic complex sites", "switched_from": "", "story": "Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight"}, {"id": 785976258, "item_id": 49123516, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49123516", "by": "dmoreno", "date": "2026-07-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "still trust react for bigger more interactive ones", "excerpt": "That's why many times HTMX is used together with alpinejs [1]. For areas that need server side, if you use say react and return a JSON you have to deserialize and do the render. It might be much more efficient to just replace. Having said that I use HTMX /alpinejs for small projects, and still trust react for bigger more interactive ones. [1] https://alpinejs.dev/", "context": "", "use_case": "larger interactive projects", "switched_from": "", "story": "Let's Make the Worst Htmx"}]}, {"text": " out of composable components, backed by a large ecosystem that suits AI-assisted coding.", "cites": [{"id": 772413296, "item_id": 48275831, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48275831", "by": "martin-adams", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "React was one of those ways of building software that gave me back the giddy excitement I had learning Visual Basic as a kid.", "excerpt": "React was one of those ways of building software that gave me back the giddy excitement I had learning Visual Basic as a kid. It\u2019s hard to explain, but the way everything was encapsulated as a component just clicked for me and suddenly the whole app could be composed. I think it was when they introduced functional components. And when it comes to hooks, I love them. Not to say other frameworks didn\u2019t do the same, the", "context": "", "use_case": "building UIs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Does Anybody Actually Like React?"}, {"id": 741159552, "item_id": 46322472, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322472", "by": "csomar", "date": "2025-12-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The reason I use React is to create components that can exist on their own", "excerpt": "If you don't need React, you probably don't need a framework anyway. The reason I use React is to create components that can exist on their own (and can be constructed/visualized on a StoryBook) and these components will then play nice with other React components. And then use JSX to make reasoning about the code simple. That's not what htmx is. > htmx is a library that allows you to access modern browser features di", "context": "", "use_case": "component-based UIs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Please just try HTMX"}, {"id": 798928768, "item_id": 49933048, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49933048", "by": "brachkow", "date": "2026-10-02", "stance": "compare", "quote": "React, as the most bare-bones framework, might be simplest to integrate, and you can see that by the enormous size of its ecosystem.", "excerpt": "I use React, Vue, and Svelte extensively, and I don't think that there is any problem with integrating 3rd party JS libraries in any of these frameworks. React, as the most bare-bones framework, might be simplest to integrate, and you can see that by the enormous size of its ecosystem. Vue and Svelte will have problems with integrating various devtools, due to the fact they use custom syntax to mimic native web tech.", "context": "Uses React, Vue, and Svelte extensively", "use_case": "frontend framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "SvelteKit 3"}, {"id": 741052097, "item_id": 46315756, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46315756", "by": "bobjordan", "date": "2025-12-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the training data for React is so massive and the patterns so standardized that the AI productivity gains are impossible to ignore.", "excerpt": "I\u2019ve been a fan of this philosophy since the Intercooler.js days. In fact, our legacy customer portal at bomquote.com still runs on Intercooler. I spent the last year building a new version using the \"modern\" version of that stack: Flask, HTMX, Alpine, and Tailwind. However, I\u2019ve recently made the difficult decision to rewrite the frontend in React (specifically React/TS, TanStack Query, Orval, and Shadcn). In a perf", "context": "builds customer portal bomquote.com", "use_case": "frontend with AI assistance", "switched_from": "HTMX", "story": "Please just try HTMX"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaint is that it is complex and bloated,", "cites": [{"id": 741483361, "item_id": 46342710, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46342710", "by": "nymanjon", "date": "2025-12-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I find React to be really complex.", "excerpt": "Here's an example offline-first hypermedia-driven soccer application. The match page is the most complex part of the application and I use Morphdom to just do a diff on the main section of the page. I find hypermedia-driven development to be super simple. I find React to be really complex. What normally takes me just some HTML rendered from the back end and some interactivity on the front end can be done in just a fe", "context": "writes CRUD apps", "use_case": "front end", "switched_from": "", "story": "Please just try HTMX"}, {"id": 772391409, "item_id": 48274463, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274463", "by": "TheRoque", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it seems like it's a huge bloated mess.", "excerpt": "I use Angular 2+, and I find it quite pleasant to use. I also like how they make the framework evolve. Not scared to have opinions (back when it came out, Typescript was barely a thing). Never got into React (but didn't try that hard to get into it), but it seems like it's a huge bloated mess.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Does Anybody Actually Like React?"}, {"id": 750821472, "item_id": 46926342, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46926342", "by": "FpUser", "date": "2026-02-07", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've never did see any value in monsters like React.", "excerpt": "I've never did see any value in monsters like React. Always use plain JavaScript, wrote web components and used some narrow scope 3rd party libraries. Works like a charm for me. Now instead of writing whole web components on my own I write skeletons with some comments and ask IDE with AI services (I use IDEs from JetBrains) to complete it. I then do the same with tee main application. So far the results are stellar. ", "context": "", "use_case": "web frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Software Engineering Is Back"}, {"id": 793459297, "item_id": 49591206, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49591206", "by": "petilon", "date": "2026-09-06", "stance": "warn", "quote": "avoid the complexities of React", "excerpt": "If the goal is to use JSX and avoid the complexities of React checkout https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder Sample application: https://github.com/wisercoder/eureka/tree/master/webapp/ClientApp", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Vidact \u2013 a compiler that turns React into direct DOM operations"}]}, {"text": " with large JS bundles and hook footguns hurting performance.", "cites": [{"id": 786107586, "item_id": 49131724, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49131724", "by": "Aeolos", "date": "2026-07-31", "stance": "warn", "quote": "First page load is 20KB down from a 750KB js bundle.", "excerpt": "I highly recommend everyone to give htmx or datastar a try, especially if your main experience is react or nextjs. We recently rewrote a half-million LOC codebase from react to datastar, with a detour through htmx first, and the results are staggering. First page load is 20KB down from a 750KB js bundle. 1 network request vs 40+. Total load time 0.1 seconds down from 2 seconds of spinners. Page refresh is so fast, th", "context": "", "use_case": "web frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Let's Make the Worst Htmx"}, {"id": 761606641, "item_id": 47600415, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47600415", "by": "lukechu10", "date": "2026-04-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "has a lot of performance footguns (looking at you useRef and useMemo)", "excerpt": "Unlike other UI libraries, I would say Sycamore has a very clear execution model. If you've used something like React before, there is all this thing about component lifecycles and hook rules where the component functions run over and over again when anything changes. This can all end up being fairly confusing and has a lot of performance footguns (looking at you useRef and useMemo). In sycamore, the component functi", "context": "", "use_case": "UI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Sycamore \u2013 next gen Rust UI library powered by fine-grained reactivity"}, {"id": 799233762, "item_id": 49952110, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49952110", "by": "josephg", "date": "2026-10-04", "stance": "compare", "quote": "But if everyone holds react wrong, it's react's fault.", "excerpt": "I should probably be more balanced when criticising react. React moved the state of the art forward when it came out. Compared to the other options we had at the time, it was excellent. But it's not better now. At least not for technical reasons. > Superior how? Runtime costs? Sure, but it does beg the question how much. Will a well-optimized Svelte app feel much better than a well-optimized React app? Virtual dom di", "context": "", "use_case": "building web UIs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why don't more developers \u201cuse the platform\u201d?"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Interactive UIs", "summary": "Commenters say React handles dynamic, complex, highly interactive sites better than plain HTML or lighter tools.", "quotes": [{"id": 772412864, "item_id": 48275804, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48275804", "by": "zarzavat", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "React is really, really good at the thing it was designed for: building interactive UIs.", "excerpt": "People hate on React because it's popular. That popularity alienates people whose use cases aren't served well by React and they wonder what the fuss is about. But React is really, really good at the thing it was designed for: building interactive UIs. You can even build native apps. Can you build a native app in htmx? Most of the alternatives to React are simplifying alternatives. They aim to take complexity away in", "context": "", "use_case": "interactive UIs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Does Anybody Actually Like React?"}, {"id": 775684736, "item_id": 48480296, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48480296", "by": "fiedzia", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "There is a reason we use React today - if you want dynamic and complex site, HTML is PITA to work with.", "excerpt": "There is a reason we use React today - if you want dynamic and complex site, HTML is PITA to work with. Either you reload everything on any change (not good), or end up with a maze of partial reloads in event handlers (not good either). It was done, it was bad, React (and similar frameworks) was the solution. If you don't need complexity of React, fine, use HTML. But if you do, who can guarantee that 5 min later some", "context": "", "use_case": "dynamic complex sites", "switched_from": "", "story": "Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight"}, {"id": 785976258, "item_id": 49123516, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49123516", "by": "dmoreno", "date": "2026-07-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "still trust react for bigger more interactive ones", "excerpt": "That's why many times HTMX is used together with alpinejs [1]. For areas that need server side, if you use say react and return a JSON you have to deserialize and do the render. It might be much more efficient to just replace. Having said that I use HTMX /alpinejs for small projects, and still trust react for bigger more interactive ones. [1] https://alpinejs.dev/", "context": "", "use_case": "larger interactive projects", "switched_from": "", "story": "Let's Make the Worst Htmx"}]}, {"label": "Developer experience", "summary": "React handles DOM and state updates for you so developers can focus on data and business logic.", "quotes": [{"id": 782233904, "item_id": 48889619, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48889619", "by": "nilirl", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I want to focus on data dependencies, so I use React instead of Web Components", "excerpt": "My point was your needs and problems are not everyone's needs and problems. I don't want to think of memory management in most projects, I want to focus on business logic, so I use Node.js instead of Rust, even if the latter gives me more control. Similarly, I don't want to think of DOM management in most projects, I want to focus on data dependencies, so I use React instead of Web Components, even if the latter give", "context": "", "use_case": "frontend development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why Vanilla JavaScript"}, {"id": 799317184, "item_id": 49957324, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49957324", "by": "locknitpicker", "date": "2026-10-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "javascript-based een frameworks not only solve them by making them implementation details but also go through great lengths to improve the developer experience.", "excerpt": "> That is a cumbersome mental model, which is why React, Angular, Vue, Svelte and every other web framework calculate that automatically for you. I think this point is what the anti-framework does not get when discussing the topic. They fail to see how hard and unpleasant it is to handle all the real-world problems that hits any production environment with a \"platform\" approach, and at the same time they fail to see ", "context": "", "use_case": "web UI state management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why don't more developers \u201cuse the platform\u201d?"}, {"id": 746479936, "item_id": 46654996, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46654996", "by": "cellis", "date": "2026-01-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's the best blend of many leaky abstractions we use to code against the browser apis", "excerpt": "While directionally correct, the article spends a lot of time glorifying jquery and not enough on what a horrible, no good, unoptimized mess of a framework jquery was, and by extension what kinds of websites were built back then. I remember those times well. The reason to use React isn't because it was new, far from it. It was because it won vs. Ember, Angular, et. al. in 2014-2015? as the best abstraction because it", "context": "", "use_case": "web UI", "switched_from": "", "story": "High-Level Is the Goal"}]}, {"label": "Component model", "summary": "Self-contained, composable components and JSX make apps easier to structure and reason about.", "quotes": [{"id": 772413296, "item_id": 48275831, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48275831", "by": "martin-adams", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "React was one of those ways of building software that gave me back the giddy excitement I had learning Visual Basic as a kid.", "excerpt": "React was one of those ways of building software that gave me back the giddy excitement I had learning Visual Basic as a kid. It\u2019s hard to explain, but the way everything was encapsulated as a component just clicked for me and suddenly the whole app could be composed. I think it was when they introduced functional components. And when it comes to hooks, I love them. Not to say other frameworks didn\u2019t do the same, the", "context": "", "use_case": "building UIs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Does Anybody Actually Like React?"}, {"id": 741159552, "item_id": 46322472, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322472", "by": "csomar", "date": "2025-12-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The reason I use React is to create components that can exist on their own", "excerpt": "If you don't need React, you probably don't need a framework anyway. The reason I use React is to create components that can exist on their own (and can be constructed/visualized on a StoryBook) and these components will then play nice with other React components. And then use JSX to make reasoning about the code simple. That's not what htmx is. > htmx is a library that allows you to access modern browser features di", "context": "", "use_case": "component-based UIs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Please just try HTMX"}, {"id": 741026064, "item_id": 46314129, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46314129", "by": "mythz", "date": "2025-12-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "with AI starting to write more of my UIs now I've switched to React/Next.js for new non-progressive UIs", "excerpt": "I keep seeing articles religiously pushing htmx, what I'm not seeing are sophisticated examples or apps written with it, just more basic example and interaction examples. I personally prefer UIs with great encapsulation/composition, which used to be Vue, but with AI starting to write more of my UIs now I've switched to React/Next.js for new non-progressive UIs.", "context": "", "use_case": "UIs written with AI", "switched_from": "Vue", "story": "Please just try HTMX"}]}, {"label": "Ecosystem and AI", "summary": "Its huge ecosystem and abundant training data make integration and AI-generated code easier.", "quotes": [{"id": 798928768, "item_id": 49933048, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49933048", "by": "brachkow", "date": "2026-10-02", "stance": "compare", "quote": "React, as the most bare-bones framework, might be simplest to integrate, and you can see that by the enormous size of its ecosystem.", "excerpt": "I use React, Vue, and Svelte extensively, and I don't think that there is any problem with integrating 3rd party JS libraries in any of these frameworks. React, as the most bare-bones framework, might be simplest to integrate, and you can see that by the enormous size of its ecosystem. Vue and Svelte will have problems with integrating various devtools, due to the fact they use custom syntax to mimic native web tech.", "context": "Uses React, Vue, and Svelte extensively", "use_case": "frontend framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "SvelteKit 3"}, {"id": 741052097, "item_id": 46315756, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46315756", "by": "bobjordan", "date": "2025-12-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the training data for React is so massive and the patterns so standardized that the AI productivity gains are impossible to ignore.", "excerpt": "I\u2019ve been a fan of this philosophy since the Intercooler.js days. In fact, our legacy customer portal at bomquote.com still runs on Intercooler. I spent the last year building a new version using the \"modern\" version of that stack: Flask, HTMX, Alpine, and Tailwind. However, I\u2019ve recently made the difficult decision to rewrite the frontend in React (specifically React/TS, TanStack Query, Orval, and Shadcn). In a perf", "context": "builds customer portal bomquote.com", "use_case": "frontend with AI assistance", "switched_from": "HTMX", "story": "Please just try HTMX"}, {"id": 765432400, "item_id": 47839525, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47839525", "by": "aitchnyu", "date": "2026-04-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Might as well tap into the React ecosystem (I love Vue BTW) and get module-organization and DRY, live preview, syntax highlighting, autocomplete, linting", "excerpt": "With modern editors `<h2>foo<h2>` is one keystroke more than `## foo`. Might as well tap into the React ecosystem (I love Vue BTW) and get module-organization and DRY, live preview, syntax highlighting, autocomplete, linting, AI expertise etc. There are tools to edit PPTs and movies with React. https://wyozi.github.io/react-pptx/ https://www.remotion.dev/", "context": "", "use_case": "building docs and slides", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: MDV \u2013 a Markdown superset for docs, dashboards, and slides with data"}]}, {"label": "Industry standard", "summary": "React is described as the standard client framework that most big websites use.", "quotes": [{"id": 779434099, "item_id": 48714631, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48714631", "by": "kristianp", "date": "2026-06-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "React is the \"standard\" client framework of the last number of years.", "excerpt": "Websites or web apps? For web apps, Rails, Django, Laravel. React is the \"standard\" client framework of the last number of years. Perhaps someone can give advice about those web techs.", "context": "", "use_case": "client frameworks", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is WordPress the best way to create new websites for beginner"}, {"id": 782212848, "item_id": 48888303, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48888303", "by": "onion2k", "date": "2026-07-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's not really React that's the issue. It's the team who built the site", "excerpt": "People keep touting react etc but I swear every mobile ordering app I use lags like hell.. I don't doubt it. People make terrible websites with React. However ... what might be happening is that you go to some websites, and some of them are great and others are terrible laggy garbage. When it's a bad one you open up devtools and see React, and that leads you to conclude that React is bad. But reality is that the good", "context": "", "use_case": "web frontends", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why Vanilla JavaScript"}, {"id": 780420928, "item_id": 48776308, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48776308", "by": "dd-sharma", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Frontend - React/Typescript", "excerpt": "For serious work, depending on the complexity of underlying functionality, I would choose the appropriate architecture and technology. For example, for a complex and large scale system I would go ahead with a 3-tier architecture; Frontend - React/Typescript, Java/Python/GO based Services for middle tier, and Relational or NOSQL database depending on the data throughput and integrity requirements. For simpler websites", "context": "", "use_case": "frontend for large-scale systems", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is WordPress the best way to create new websites for beginner"}]}, {"label": "Simplicity", "summary": "Some fans find React simple, with a functional-programming feel and full TypeScript support.", "quotes": [{"id": 799287312, "item_id": 49955457, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49955457", "by": "shepherdjerred", "date": "2026-10-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I haven\u2019t found a front end library I like more than React except maybe Astro.", "excerpt": "I haven\u2019t found a front end library I like more than React except maybe Astro. I didn\u2019t really like Svelte and I am pretty opposed to htmx. It is certainly better than Angular and Vue, though Vue 3 is tolerable. Maybe there are more popular options nowadays but tbh I am not really looking to move from React. I have zero complaints other than maybe the push towards server rendering and partnering with Next.js React is", "context": "", "use_case": "front end development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why don't more developers \u201cuse the platform\u201d?"}, {"id": 747115664, "item_id": 46694729, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46694729", "by": "PaulHoule", "date": "2026-01-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I came to really appreciate React over time.", "excerpt": "I came to really appreciate React over time. My initial objections were: (a) circa 2006 I was making very demanding RIAs such as knowledge graph editors and GIS decision support software and I've yet to see any modern framework that is as good as what I was using then (not in JS but rather GWT and Silverlight w/ the same async comms) and (b) the React model is not a 100% match for the form-based applications that we ", "context": "", "use_case": "building UIs and dashboards", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Complexity and bloat", "summary": "Many describe React as overly complex, bloated, or needlessly cumbersome.", "quotes": [{"id": 741483361, "item_id": 46342710, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46342710", "by": "nymanjon", "date": "2025-12-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I find React to be really complex.", "excerpt": "Here's an example offline-first hypermedia-driven soccer application. The match page is the most complex part of the application and I use Morphdom to just do a diff on the main section of the page. I find hypermedia-driven development to be super simple. I find React to be really complex. What normally takes me just some HTML rendered from the back end and some interactivity on the front end can be done in just a fe", "context": "writes CRUD apps", "use_case": "front end", "switched_from": "", "story": "Please just try HTMX"}, {"id": 772391409, "item_id": 48274463, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274463", "by": "TheRoque", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it seems like it's a huge bloated mess.", "excerpt": "I use Angular 2+, and I find it quite pleasant to use. I also like how they make the framework evolve. Not scared to have opinions (back when it came out, Typescript was barely a thing). Never got into React (but didn't try that hard to get into it), but it seems like it's a huge bloated mess.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Does Anybody Actually Like React?"}, {"id": 741145952, "item_id": 46321622, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46321622", "by": "elif", "date": "2025-12-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "inbred, unecessarily cumbersome compromise bred from JavaScript and performance metrics", "excerpt": "I always thought the GWT->react branch of the webdev family tree was an inbred, unecessarily cumbersome compromise bred from JavaScript and performance metrics rather than descending from the beautiful code family we used to have with Rails and Django. The only reason react seems to look beautiful is because it's compared to custom JavaScript state management rather than the server-state paradigm that probably makes ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Please just try HTMX"}]}, {"label": "Performance and size", "summary": "Large JS bundles and virtual DOM overhead can make sites slow, and some sites felt worse after switching to React.", "quotes": [{"id": 786107586, "item_id": 49131724, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49131724", "by": "Aeolos", "date": "2026-07-31", "stance": "warn", "quote": "First page load is 20KB down from a 750KB js bundle.", "excerpt": "I highly recommend everyone to give htmx or datastar a try, especially if your main experience is react or nextjs. We recently rewrote a half-million LOC codebase from react to datastar, with a detour through htmx first, and the results are staggering. First page load is 20KB down from a 750KB js bundle. 1 network request vs 40+. Total load time 0.1 seconds down from 2 seconds of spinners. Page refresh is so fast, th", "context": "", "use_case": "web frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Let's Make the Worst Htmx"}, {"id": 799233762, "item_id": 49952110, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49952110", "by": "josephg", "date": "2026-10-04", "stance": "compare", "quote": "But if everyone holds react wrong, it's react's fault.", "excerpt": "I should probably be more balanced when criticising react. React moved the state of the art forward when it came out. Compared to the other options we had at the time, it was excellent. But it's not better now. At least not for technical reasons. > Superior how? Runtime costs? Sure, but it does beg the question how much. Will a well-optimized Svelte app feel much better than a well-optimized React app? Virtual dom di", "context": "", "use_case": "building web UIs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why don't more developers \u201cuse the platform\u201d?"}, {"id": 738379840, "item_id": 46148740, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46148740", "by": "dreamcompiler", "date": "2025-12-04", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Github (just to cite one example) has become much less usable since they switched to React.", "excerpt": "> We also saw the rise of React, which is possibly the greatest tragedy to ever befall front-end programming (and I say this as a recovering React fan). Amen. Github (just to cite one example) has become much less usable since they switched to React. And it's clearly not a site that needs React, since it worked fine for 17 years without it.", "context": "", "use_case": "front-end development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Programming peaked"}]}, {"label": "Hooks and state", "summary": "Hook rules, re-rendering components and state in components lead to confusing performance and design footguns.", "quotes": [{"id": 761606641, "item_id": 47600415, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47600415", "by": "lukechu10", "date": "2026-04-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "has a lot of performance footguns (looking at you useRef and useMemo)", "excerpt": "Unlike other UI libraries, I would say Sycamore has a very clear execution model. If you've used something like React before, there is all this thing about component lifecycles and hook rules where the component functions run over and over again when anything changes. This can all end up being fairly confusing and has a lot of performance footguns (looking at you useRef and useMemo). In sycamore, the component functi", "context": "", "use_case": "UI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Sycamore \u2013 next gen Rust UI library powered by fine-grained reactivity"}, {"id": 763164145, "item_id": 47697759, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47697759", "by": "oDot", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "warn", "quote": "The problems OP tries to address are unfortunately a deep design flaw in mainstream frameworks like React and Vue.", "excerpt": "The problems OP tries to address are unfortunately a deep design flaw in mainstream frameworks like React and Vue. This is due to 2 properties they have: 1. They marry view hierarchy to state hierarchy 2. They make it very ergonomic to put state in components I've been through this endless times. There are significant ways to reduce this friction, but in the end there's a tight ceiling. This is why this kind of work ", "context": "", "use_case": "frontend framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Tired of logic in useEffect, I built a class-based React state manager"}]}, {"label": "Ecosystem churn", "summary": "The ecosystem is criticized for churn, fragmentation and frequent dependency security alerts.", "quotes": [{"id": 763844882, "item_id": 47740305, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47740305", "by": "fny", "date": "2026-04-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "The React ecosystem is by far the worst offender.", "excerpt": "Aside from the obvious \"AI can't see\" criticism, AI sucks at frontend because frontend sucks. Why does frontend suck? Churn. To quote the article: 1. \"It trained on ancient garbage\" which is the by product of massive churn and this attitude leads to even more churn 2. \"It doesn't know WHY we do things\" because we don't either... even the paradigms used in frontend dev have needlessly churned My fix? I switched from R", "context": "", "use_case": "frontend development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why AI Sucks at Front End"}, {"id": 733503635, "item_id": 45843977, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45843977", "by": "timinou", "date": "2025-11-06", "stance": "warn", "quote": "having to deal with the React loop. The ecosystem is so fragmented there", "excerpt": "I don't buy it either. I've been building my own backend framework for the past 2.5 years, and even though it's a DSL over Python and there's no documentation online and barely one in my computer, Claude Code understands it with enough usage examples in my codebase. In front-end as well\u2014I've been able to go much farther for simple projects using alpine than more complex frameworks. For big products I use Elm, which i", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dead Framework Theory"}, {"id": 741064593, "item_id": 46316537, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46316537", "by": "n4pw01f", "date": "2025-12-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I love not having security alerts every week to patch because of some buried react dependency library", "excerpt": "I have used HTMX extensively with AI agents. It is fantastic for dynamic views. Agent one: handles the request and does tool calls Agent two: reads the result and decides on quality vs a re-drive if it\u2019s low quality Agent three: decides how to present the information to the user, creates a collection of HTMX elements HTMX hx-get is reliably, and beautifully rendering the result of the Agentic Workflow without any rea", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Please just try HTMX"}]}, {"label": "Build tooling", "summary": "Some prefer setups that avoid React's build and deploy steps entirely.", "quotes": [{"id": 802856160, "item_id": 50178510, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50178510", "by": "chamomeal", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Yes, I love react. It is so awesome.", "excerpt": "I don\u2019t disagree with you and I lurve frameworks. Yes, I love react. It is so awesome. But it is SO nice to not have any build step. All of my new projects start as a single babashka script now. You got html templating, throw in a stylesheet. Slap a datastar script tag in there for everything else. It\u2019s just easy peasy.", "context": "", "use_case": "web frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Future of CSS"}, {"id": 772388576, "item_id": 48274286, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274286", "by": "FpUser", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I see no point in React at all.", "excerpt": "I see no point in React at all. Modern JS with HTML components is all I need. I use my own state management component (basically implementation of state machine with async reentrant publish subscribe). JS dynamically loads strictly on on-need basis so no need to suck all code on initial load. In the end my front-ends are tiny, no need for build / deploy / source map and all other BS steps) and super easy to debug.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Does Anybody Actually Like React?"}]}, {"label": "Server-rendering push", "summary": "One fan's only complaint is the push toward server rendering and the partnership with Next.js.", "quotes": [{"id": 799287312, "item_id": 49955457, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49955457", "by": "shepherdjerred", "date": "2026-10-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I haven\u2019t found a front end library I like more than React except maybe Astro.", "excerpt": "I haven\u2019t found a front end library I like more than React except maybe Astro. I didn\u2019t really like Svelte and I am pretty opposed to htmx. It is certainly better than Angular and Vue, though Vue 3 is tolerable. Maybe there are more popular options nowadays but tbh I am not really looking to move from React. I have zero complaints other than maybe the push towards server rendering and partnering with Next.js React is", "context": "", "use_case": "front end development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why don't more developers \u201cuse the platform\u201d?"}]}], "who": [{"by": "sidfer", "context": "job seeker, CS student", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49261025", "date": "2026-08-11"}, {"by": "jhonatangalves", "context": "Front-end engineer seeking work", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49259164", "date": "2026-08-11"}, {"by": "empressplay", "context": "runs turtlespaces.org", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48886125", "date": "2026-07-12"}, {"by": "kellyjackson5", "context": "Engineering manager at Rabbet", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48819370", "date": "2026-07-07"}, {"by": "dvrp", "context": "built a product used by >40M users", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756653", "date": "2026-07-01"}, {"by": "zayd7861", "context": "22 year old solo dev", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48661295", "date": "2026-06-24"}, {"by": "denizcakiroglu", "context": "full-stack engineer specializing in production LLM systems", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48502797", "date": "2026-06-12"}, {"by": "ChiperSoft", "context": "laid-off developer who built a JSX-based template engine", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48276067", "date": "2026-05-25"}, {"by": "vaibhav2614", "context": "Engineering Manager at Nectar Social", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47223326", "date": "2026-03-02"}, {"by": "auvira_systems", "context": "built a browser-based accounting tool", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47220017", "date": "2026-03-02"}, {"by": "overgard", "context": "uses React for years at work", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47105862", "date": "2026-02-21"}, {"by": "trsthales", "context": "maker", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46667540", "date": "2026-01-18"}], "tags": ["for interactive web apps", "for large projects", "for AI-assisted coding", "for TypeScript users", "for data visualization"], "use_cases": ["frontend", "web frontend", "frontend development", "frontend framework", "web apps", "web development"], "compared": [{"slug": "htmx", "name": "HTMX", "co": 21, "switched_from": 2, "switched_to": 3}, {"slug": "svelte", "name": "Svelte", "co": 20, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "vue", "name": "Vue", "co": 20, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "angular", "name": "Angular", "co": 16, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "next-js", "name": "Next.js", "co": 15, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "postgresql", "name": "PostgreSQL", "co": 12, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "django", "name": "Django", "co": 7, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "solid", "name": "Solid", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}], "makers": [{"id": 772389968, "item_id": 48274373, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274373", "by": "vjeux", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm biased because I was part of the people that made it happen but yeah, I love React.", "excerpt": "I'm biased because I was part of the people that made it happen but yeah, I love React. Before that, I would try everything under the sun to fix the issues I was having doing front-end. But since React came out, I don't have this need anymore. I can just focus on building stuff.", "context": "part of the team that made React", "use_case": "front-end development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Does Anybody Actually Like React?"}, {"id": 732823569, "item_id": 45801473, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45801473", "by": "k_kelly", "date": "2025-11-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We love python, react, tailwind, OpenAI, Google Cloud, and Claude Code.", "excerpt": "Glitch | Product Engineer | Ireland & Remote (EMEA preferred) | glitchads.ai Glitch is building the AI agent for Advertising Glitch let's Businesses create Ad Campaigns in 5 minutes (Down from 5 days) that perform 5 times better than traditional agencies. Our AI makes high performing ads available to everyone. We need Engineers who want to tackle hard problems like treating the real world as context for LLMs, underst", "context": "hiring at Glitch", "use_case": "frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2025)"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274077", "title": "Does Anybody Actually Like React?", "mentions": 12}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46312973", "title": "Please just try HTMX", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49950554", "title": "Why don't more developers \u201cuse the platform\u201d?", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50175070", "title": "The Future of CSS", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49478178", "title": "Htmx 4.0", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49156682", "title": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2026)", "mentions": 2}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"warn": 3, "neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {"warn": 5, "recommend": 4, "neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 4, "recommend": 2}, "2026-02": {"warn": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"warn": 4, "neutral": 2, "recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {"warn": 7, "neutral": 6, "recommend": 3}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 4, "recommend": 3, "warn": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 6, "neutral": 3, "warn": 2}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 7}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 3, "warn": 3}, "2026-10": {"compare": 2, "recommend": 5, "neutral": 1, "warn": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 802891104, "item_id": 50180694, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50180694", "by": "satvikpendem", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "using React or a similar framework is simply the right move", "excerpt": "Wrong on both counts. I've worked in companies with vanilla JS only and made parts of those frameworks they ended up building. It is absolutely not \"relatively tiny, fast, piece of code that is specific to that site's needs\" and once we switched to React we actually saw improvements in many parts of the sites' loading speeds. Next you're gonna No True Scotsman me by telling me the company was just bad but I've seen e", "context": "", "use_case": "web frontend", "switched_from": "vanilla JS", "story": "The Future of CSS"}, {"id": 802856160, "item_id": 50178510, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50178510", "by": "chamomeal", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Yes, I love react. It is so awesome.", "excerpt": "I don\u2019t disagree with you and I lurve frameworks. Yes, I love react. It is so awesome. But it is SO nice to not have any build step. All of my new projects start as a single babashka script now. You got html templating, throw in a stylesheet. Slap a datastar script tag in there for everything else. It\u2019s just easy peasy.", "context": "", "use_case": "web frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Future of CSS"}, {"id": 802691360, "item_id": 50168210, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50168210", "by": "Alifatisk", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "React? We can all criticize it, but it has revolutionized the web.", "excerpt": "> These people have arguably contributed nothing to society for over a decade [\u2026] they\u2019re being praised for being the example of best engineers. React? We can all criticize it, but it has revolutionized the web. Llama. Did you forget what sparked the whole open-weight wave? It was that. I dislike Meta, but I would not criticize the engineers competence. They have done impressive things, check out their blog if you ge", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Facebook Pages require paid subscription to post more than two links per month"}, {"id": 801359233, "item_id": 50084952, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50084952", "by": "tmnvix", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I gave up on React over 5 years ago", "excerpt": "You'll have to pry Django from my cold, dead hands. Like others, I use AI to write code these days, but that makes it all the more important that I can make sense of it quickly. The conventions of a framework help with that. Also, the boat may be leaving, but I still have one foot on the shore. I'm holding on to my independence - even if I might be kidding myself and it turns out I'll be dependent on AI from here on ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Do Frameworks Matter Anymore?"}, {"id": 799878803, "item_id": 49992425, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49992425", "by": "karmakaze", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "For web I'd probably also accept Vue, Svelte, or (simple) React.", "excerpt": "I was curious about codeberg.org as an alternative to Github for opensource work. They had voted on an LLM policy and decided against vibe-coded repos while allowing some AI use. This got me thinking how I want to use AI and if it fit with their policy. The best I could figure is that I like to start with requirements, use AI to discuss and settle on its high level design and specific aspects of its implementation. I", "context": "", "use_case": "web frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Reasons to Dislike AI Coding"}, {"id": 799317184, "item_id": 49957324, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49957324", "by": "locknitpicker", "date": "2026-10-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "javascript-based een frameworks not only solve them by making them implementation details but also go through great lengths to improve the developer experience.", "excerpt": "> That is a cumbersome mental model, which is why React, Angular, Vue, Svelte and every other web framework calculate that automatically for you. I think this point is what the anti-framework does not get when discussing the topic. They fail to see how hard and unpleasant it is to handle all the real-world problems that hits any production environment with a \"platform\" approach, and at the same time they fail to see ", "context": "", "use_case": "web UI state management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why don't more developers \u201cuse the platform\u201d?"}, {"id": 799287312, "item_id": 49955457, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49955457", "by": "shepherdjerred", "date": "2026-10-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I haven\u2019t found a front end library I like more than React except maybe Astro.", "excerpt": "I haven\u2019t found a front end library I like more than React except maybe Astro. I didn\u2019t really like Svelte and I am pretty opposed to htmx. It is certainly better than Angular and Vue, though Vue 3 is tolerable. Maybe there are more popular options nowadays but tbh I am not really looking to move from React. I have zero complaints other than maybe the push towards server rendering and partnering with Next.js React is", "context": "", "use_case": "front end development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why don't more developers \u201cuse the platform\u201d?"}, {"id": 799233762, "item_id": 49952110, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49952110", "by": "josephg", "date": "2026-10-04", "stance": "compare", "quote": "But if everyone holds react wrong, it's react's fault.", "excerpt": "I should probably be more balanced when criticising react. React moved the state of the art forward when it came out. Compared to the other options we had at the time, it was excellent. But it's not better now. At least not for technical reasons. > Superior how? Runtime costs? Sure, but it does beg the question how much. Will a well-optimized Svelte app feel much better than a well-optimized React app? Virtual dom di", "context": "", "use_case": "building web UIs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why don't more developers \u201cuse the platform\u201d?"}, {"id": 798928768, "item_id": 49933048, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49933048", "by": "brachkow", "date": "2026-10-02", "stance": "compare", "quote": "React, as the most bare-bones framework, might be simplest to integrate, and you can see that by the enormous size of its ecosystem.", "excerpt": "I use React, Vue, and Svelte extensively, and I don't think that there is any problem with integrating 3rd party JS libraries in any of these frameworks. React, as the most bare-bones framework, might be simplest to integrate, and you can see that by the enormous size of its ecosystem. Vue and Svelte will have problems with integrating various devtools, due to the fact they use custom syntax to mimic native web tech.", "context": "Uses React, Vue, and Svelte extensively", "use_case": "frontend framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "SvelteKit 3"}, {"id": 795846996, "item_id": 49740437, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49740437", "by": "capydev42", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "React + TypeScript for frontend", "excerpt": "Hi there, I am the creator of DrillFlow, I would like to share my thoughts behind the creation of DrillFlow. Nowadays my job shifted from implementing of solutions to planning/understanding/explaining software solutions. So i got used to create diagrams on the fly while explaining or listening to others. My problem was to fit the most important abstractions and also details on the same canvas and keep it still readab", "context": "", "use_case": "frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: DrillFlow \u2013 a diagram editor where every node opens into a sub-diagram"}, {"id": 795466225, "item_id": 49716639, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49716639", "by": "TimTheTinker", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I'll be glad when frontend web development sheds Tailwind and React", "excerpt": "This is really great work, but I think a lot of folks on HN don't look kindly on the CSS Zen Garden or that era of CSS. They think the markup/stylesheet separation of concerns was a terrible idea, an idea that Tailwind exists to fix. (I think they're wrong, that separation of concerns is good, Tailwind is a hack, and get off my lawn while you're at it.) The point is - now the modern vanilla web platform really can su", "context": "", "use_case": "frontend development", "switched_from": "", "story": "The CSS Zen Garden dream, finally shipped"}, {"id": 794437057, "item_id": 49652316, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49652316", "by": "dools", "date": "2026-09-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use React for the web frontend", "excerpt": "Well the thing is that the server code is basically Java, and the only bad thing about Java is writing it but since I don\u2019t have to write it, it\u2019s actually a really solid option. Then you have shared UI (don\u2019t use WASM for web though it\u2019s terrible, I use React for the web frontend) but you can switch to some or all native components when you need to on any platform. So for example I needed native components for secur", "context": "", "use_case": "web frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"}, {"id": 794213313, "item_id": 49638332, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49638332", "by": "prophesi", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "The lack of single-file components is one of several reasons I wouldn't reach for React prior to the LLM craze", "excerpt": "The lack of single-file components is one of several reasons I wouldn't reach for React prior to the LLM craze[0]. For personal projects, I love Svelte. You wouldn't need tailwind there for the reasons proposed given their support for it. [0] Things have probably changed, but Svelte 5 was a litmus test for how recent the data cutoff was for an LLM model. Meanwhile React _especially_ has no reason to change how the fr", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Shopify acquires Tailwind"}, {"id": 793459297, "item_id": 49591206, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49591206", "by": "petilon", "date": "2026-09-06", "stance": "warn", "quote": "avoid the complexities of React", "excerpt": "If the goal is to use JSX and avoid the complexities of React checkout https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder Sample application: https://github.com/wisercoder/eureka/tree/master/webapp/ClientApp", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Vidact \u2013 a compiler that turns React into direct DOM operations"}, {"id": 793430404, "item_id": 49589400, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49589400", "by": "gourmetspam", "date": "2026-09-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Stack is just Next.js / React + PostgreSQL hosted on Vercel + Supabase with GH Actions.", "excerpt": "I built Parsefin because I use tools like Dataroma and WhaleWisdom to follow what well-known investors are doing, but I was frustrated by the limited number of pre-selected investors available and terrible websites. Going to the SEC's website directly is also inefficient since you have to search for funds one-by-one, and you don't see the time series data. What Parsefin does: Parsefin parses SEC 13F/G/D portfolio dis", "context": "", "use_case": "web app stack", "switched_from": "", "story": "Parsefin \u2013 A modern alternative to WhaleWisdom for 13F tracking"}, {"id": 792061249, "item_id": 49503828, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49503828", "by": "csallen", "date": "2026-08-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "It's built apps for me using React, Ember, Astro, etc.", "excerpt": "I use Claude Code, primarily writing web applications and JavaScript. I'll have it use various frameworks. It's built apps for me using React, Ember, Astro, etc. I don't restrict myself to frameworks I'm particularly familiar with, since it's easy for the AI to teach me the basics whenever I would like to dig in. As for specific practices, these are my main ones: - I have a gotchas-log.md file that acts as a log of g", "context": "", "use_case": "web apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What my dad taught me about AI coding in the 90s"}, {"id": 791769041, "item_id": 49485565, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49485565", "by": "embedding-shape", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "maybe it's good for some things, not for everything and not as a default", "excerpt": "Yeah, typically I end up building websites (for myself and others) in basically three \"lanes\". Static HTML/CSS files, great for docs, presentations, reports and similar. Or, websites with some interactive/dynamic elements, HTMX is great for this. Or, fully fledged \"client-side apps\" where it's more of an application than website, then I go full out dynamic programming with ClojureScript and similar approaches. I'm no", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Htmx 4.0"}, {"id": 791761473, "item_id": 49485092, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49485092", "by": "perardi", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I honestly love React", "excerpt": "I agree. We are moving away from HTMX at work, to React. (After we moved away from Angular. That was\u2026a choice\u2026that I didn\u2019t make.) Here\u2019s the thing: there\u2019s still a place for HTMX. Lots of places. But \u201cbuilding an SPA but not actually and SPA\u201d is not a lane for HTMX. Nor do they promote HTMX for that purpose. Really quite the opposite. Different tools for different jobs. (Me? I honestly love React, just a more minima", "context": "", "use_case": "web frontend", "switched_from": "HTMX", "story": "Htmx 4.0"}, {"id": 788176405, "item_id": 49261025, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49261025", "by": "sidfer", "date": "2026-08-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (UTC\u22123) Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes Technologies: TypeScript (strict) \u00b7 React \u00b7 Next.js \u00b7 Node.js \u00b7 Python \u00b7 SQL/PostgreSQL \u00b7 Supabase \u00b7 Docker \u00b7 GitHub Actions/CI \u00b7 Azure \u00b7 LLM APIs (Anthropic, OpenAI) \u00b7 RAG \u00b7 agent architectures \u00b7 Cursor/Claude Code in the daily loop R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://sidneyferreira.com - https://aifield.tech \u2014 https://github.com/sidfer Email: ferreirasidn", "context": "job seeker, CS student", "use_case": "frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2026)"}, {"id": 788146624, "item_id": 49259164, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49259164", "by": "jhonatangalves", "date": "2026-08-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "React, TypeScript, Next.js, Node.js, Nest.js, PostgreSQL", "excerpt": "Location: S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil Role: Front-End Software Engineer | React \u00b7 TypeScript \u00b7 Next.js \u00b7 Node.js \u00b7 NestJS Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes Technologies: React, TypeScript, Next.js, Node.js, Nest.js, PostgreSQL, REST & GraphQL APIs, Tailwind CSS, Styled Components, Material UI, Jest, Cypress, Playwright, LLM Observability (LangSmith), CI/CD. R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UMnk9HUMT2djA4ZQcjUCxL0", "context": "Front-end engineer seeking work", "use_case": "frontend development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2026)"}, {"id": 787743824, "item_id": 49233989, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49233989", "by": "eljonny", "date": "2026-08-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "i'm using react on the front, pretty interesting how it manages states in the frontend", "excerpt": "my own high speed train viewer (trainradar) that i use to further develop my software development skills. so far i'm happy with it and its performance, and it has forced me to learn how to scrape without being detected/banned i'm using react on the front, pretty interesting how it manages states in the frontend and how to come up with new strategies to not trigger so manny re-renders of the UI, and on the back i use ", "context": "", "use_case": "frontend of train viewer", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)"}, {"id": 787449234, "item_id": 49215577, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49215577", "by": "rahulmax", "date": "2026-08-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The stack is Next.js / React / Zustand with zundo for undo/redo, Clerk for auth.", "excerpt": "Author here. Thank you very much for the kind words! I'm a product designer and a design engineer and I love tactile interfaces and typography. My goal was to challenge myself to build this purely by 'describing' the interface to an LLM, without giving it any image references. Being mosly working in Figma / Sketch for the past decade or so, the process was utterly painful and I craved to go back to Figma to polish an", "context": "", "use_case": "UI library", "switched_from": "", "story": "TypeStax: A type scale generator with vintage audio hardware interface"}, {"id": 786574496, "item_id": 49160906, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49160906", "by": "frollogaston", "date": "2026-08-03", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "have been relying heavily on React for side projects", "excerpt": "People who work on web browsers have ranted that HTML/CSS isn't a very natural interface into the engine, so it's very inefficient and has nasty edge cases. I know nothing about browser engines but do find CSS awkward as a user when I'm not making a plaintext website, so have been relying heavily on React for side projects. Been thinking about doing a toy project where I try to build my own alternative to HTML/CSS th", "context": "", "use_case": "side projects UI", "switched_from": "", "story": "You might want to build your WebApp in Canvas instead of HTML"}, {"id": 786134802, "item_id": 49133425, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49133425", "by": "stared", "date": "2026-08-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "my go-to visualization package is React, sometimes with a pinch of D3.js", "excerpt": "\"A Visualization Language for the AI Era\", as a tagline, sounds weird. I had the best success with popular and versatile packages like matplotlib and ggplot2 - even 1.5 ago (vide https://quesma.com/blog/which-chart-would-you-swipe-right/). Now, frankly, my go-to visualization package is React, sometimes with a pinch of D3.js (e.g. https://p.migdal.pl/tree-of-tree/).", "context": "", "use_case": "data visualization", "switched_from": "matplotlib", "story": "Flint: A Visualization Language for the AI Era"}, {"id": 786107586, "item_id": 49131724, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49131724", "by": "Aeolos", "date": "2026-07-31", "stance": "warn", "quote": "First page load is 20KB down from a 750KB js bundle.", "excerpt": "I highly recommend everyone to give htmx or datastar a try, especially if your main experience is react or nextjs. We recently rewrote a half-million LOC codebase from react to datastar, with a detour through htmx first, and the results are staggering. First page load is 20KB down from a 750KB js bundle. 1 network request vs 40+. Total load time 0.1 seconds down from 2 seconds of spinners. Page refresh is so fast, th", "context": "", "use_case": "web frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Let's Make the Worst Htmx"}, {"id": 785976258, "item_id": 49123516, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49123516", "by": "dmoreno", "date": "2026-07-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "still trust react for bigger more interactive ones", "excerpt": "That's why many times HTMX is used together with alpinejs [1]. For areas that need server side, if you use say react and return a JSON you have to deserialize and do the render. It might be much more efficient to just replace. Having said that I use HTMX /alpinejs for small projects, and still trust react for bigger more interactive ones. [1] https://alpinejs.dev/", "context": "", "use_case": "larger interactive projects", "switched_from": "", "story": "Let's Make the Worst Htmx"}, {"id": 784895412, "item_id": 49055963, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49055963", "by": "faangguyindia", "date": "2026-07-26", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "if we need some reactivity, i use react (simply due to react experience from work)", "excerpt": "I mostly use Go + SQLite for all the things I used to use Rails, JavaScript, or Python for. I find python django wastes too much resources, just look at memory usage. One of my web app backend (go) is serving approx 100 req/s right now and i look at pprof i see it's not bottlenecked by CPU but mostly IO and i love this. Writing concurrent code in Go is easy, the code i wrote 10yrs ago still compiles with no issue! Th", "context": "", "use_case": "reactivity", "switched_from": "", "story": "Some more things about Django I've been enjoying"}, {"id": 784614177, "item_id": 49038386, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49038386", "by": "epolanski", "date": "2026-07-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I cannot swallow yet another Vue/React crap.", "excerpt": "I love both effect and elm, but I cannot swallow yet another Vue/React crap. Especially after having used ruby and elixir extensively after years of react/Vue crap, it feels so backwards.", "context": "", "use_case": "frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "The front end framework for correctness: built on Effect, architected like Elm"}, {"id": 784576240, "item_id": 49036015, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49036015", "by": "RattlesnakeJake", "date": "2026-07-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I like React well enough.", "excerpt": "Or at least the culture around JavaScript . I love writing JavaScript. I like React well enough. I'm not sold on NodeJS, though I'll accept that its struggles are no different than any other package manager. I just wish the whole thing would stand still for a minute. It's seriously exhausting to keep up with all of the deprecations, rewrites, new \"best\" frameworks, etc.", "context": "", "use_case": "web development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?"}, {"id": 782233904, "item_id": 48889619, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48889619", "by": "nilirl", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I want to focus on data dependencies, so I use React instead of Web Components", "excerpt": "My point was your needs and problems are not everyone's needs and problems. I don't want to think of memory management in most projects, I want to focus on business logic, so I use Node.js instead of Rust, even if the latter gives me more control. Similarly, I don't want to think of DOM management in most projects, I want to focus on data dependencies, so I use React instead of Web Components, even if the latter give", "context": "", "use_case": "frontend development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why Vanilla JavaScript"}, {"id": 782212848, "item_id": 48888303, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48888303", "by": "onion2k", "date": "2026-07-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's not really React that's the issue. It's the team who built the site", "excerpt": "People keep touting react etc but I swear every mobile ordering app I use lags like hell.. I don't doubt it. People make terrible websites with React. However ... what might be happening is that you go to some websites, and some of them are great and others are terrible laggy garbage. When it's a bad one you open up devtools and see React, and that leads you to conclude that React is bad. But reality is that the good", "context": "", "use_case": "web frontends", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why Vanilla JavaScript"}, {"id": 782178001, "item_id": 48886125, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48886125", "by": "empressplay", "date": "2026-07-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "we use three and react", "excerpt": "This is great, and my users (turtlespaces.org) could absolutely use this (we use three and react), but you haven't specified any license?", "context": "runs turtlespaces.org", "use_case": "web UI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)"}, {"id": 781109925, "item_id": 48819370, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48819370", "by": "kellyjackson5", "date": "2026-07-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "frontend is React (mostly TS now, with some legacy JS still being converted)", "excerpt": "Rabbet (YC S17) | Sr. Software Engineer (Elixir/React) | REMOTE (TX, NC, CO) | Full time Rabbet is hiring Sr. Software Engineers to help us streamline construction finances. We offer cloud-based software for commercial lenders and real estate developers to centralize construction finances, automate administrative tasks, and reduce the time spent managing draws. Backend is in Elixir (Phoenix/Absinthe/Postgres) hosted ", "context": "Engineering manager at Rabbet", "use_case": "frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2026)"}, {"id": 780420928, "item_id": 48776308, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48776308", "by": "dd-sharma", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Frontend - React/Typescript", "excerpt": "For serious work, depending on the complexity of underlying functionality, I would choose the appropriate architecture and technology. For example, for a complex and large scale system I would go ahead with a 3-tier architecture; Frontend - React/Typescript, Java/Python/GO based Services for middle tier, and Relational or NOSQL database depending on the data throughput and integrity requirements. For simpler websites", "context": "", "use_case": "frontend for large-scale systems", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is WordPress the best way to create new websites for beginner"}, {"id": 780106448, "item_id": 48756653, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756653", "by": "dvrp", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "use React or even vibecode", "excerpt": "I love @Animats comment! I come from reading about CRDTs from Evan Wallace and also having built a product used by >40M users. It applies to software products too! In their words\u2026 If you want to build products, use React or even vibecode; you will learn higher-level issues of solutions to problems (i.e. people problems rather than machine problems), not how to push data/state/computation around. The problem is solvin", "context": "built a product used by >40M users", "use_case": "building products", "switched_from": "", "story": "What to Learn to Be a Graphics Programmer"}, {"id": 779434099, "item_id": 48714631, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48714631", "by": "kristianp", "date": "2026-06-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "React is the \"standard\" client framework of the last number of years.", "excerpt": "Websites or web apps? For web apps, Rails, Django, Laravel. React is the \"standard\" client framework of the last number of years. Perhaps someone can give advice about those web techs.", "context": "", "use_case": "client frameworks", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is WordPress the best way to create new websites for beginner"}, {"id": 778580722, "item_id": 48661295, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48661295", "by": "zayd7861", "date": "2026-06-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "FastAPI, React, Celery, Postgres, and Redis", "excerpt": "Hey HN, I'm a 22 year old solo dev. Over the last 8 months, I wrote 315k lines of code to build an on-chain index fund platform. The stack is FastAPI, React, Celery, Postgres, and Redis running on AWS for $70/month. The core engine works by: Aggregating up to 5,000 user orders every 30 seconds. Routing them across DEX protocols for execution. Settling into a single Gnosis Safe transaction to cut gas costs by 80%. A c", "context": "22 year old solo dev", "use_case": "frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Wealtii \u2013 A multi-sig digital asset index fund built by a solo founder"}, {"id": 777802962, "item_id": 48612685, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48612685", "by": "becomevocal", "date": "2026-06-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "we actually use React / Vite and Next with Persona across a few of our products", "excerpt": "Appreciate it. And thank you for the work on WebMCP! For everyone passing by, Alex created https://docs.mcp-b.ai/ and we use two of his libraries to enable WebMCP more cleanly. We found MCP-B after we built our own It's interesting how experimental web tech vs. frameworks are. Kind of flipped once React and Next.js took off. Now we get to see what the browser can do again. Find the balance that works for each case No", "context": "", "use_case": "web apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Persona.js \u2013 a vanilla-JS agent UI library with native WebMCP (MIT)"}, {"id": 776434368, "item_id": 48527148, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48527148", "by": "jdw64", "date": "2026-06-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "But I like React", "excerpt": "You seem to have said what I was trying to say, but much more eloquently. I also agree with your opinion on Angular. But I like React, so I'm a little sad. Still, I mostly agree with you. The reasons you criticize React are exactly the reasons I love React. Because it changes slowly, even someone like me can keep up. (Just kidding.)", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Birth and Death of JavaScript (2014)"}, {"id": 776044756, "item_id": 48502797, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48502797", "by": "denizcakiroglu", "date": "2026-06-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Location: Istanbul, T\u00fcrkiye (relocating to Guildford, UK in Sept 2026) Remote: Yes \u2014 full EU overlap; US-East evenings (UTC+3, moving to UTC+0) Willing to relocate: No Technologies: TypeScript, Node.js, NestJS, Fastify, Next.js, React, React Native/Expo, PostgreSQL/Prisma, Redis/BullMQ, Claude API, RAG, tool-calling/MCP, pgvector, Playwright R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://github.com/denizcakiroglu322 Email: denizcakiroglu322@gma", "context": "full-stack engineer specializing in production LLM systems", "use_case": "web frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (June 2026)"}, {"id": 775684736, "item_id": 48480296, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48480296", "by": "fiedzia", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "There is a reason we use React today - if you want dynamic and complex site, HTML is PITA to work with.", "excerpt": "There is a reason we use React today - if you want dynamic and complex site, HTML is PITA to work with. Either you reload everything on any change (not good), or end up with a maze of partial reloads in event handlers (not good either). It was done, it was bad, React (and similar frameworks) was the solution. If you don't need complexity of React, fine, use HTML. But if you do, who can guarantee that 5 min later some", "context": "", "use_case": "dynamic complex sites", "switched_from": "", "story": "Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight"}, {"id": 772413296, "item_id": 48275831, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48275831", "by": "martin-adams", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "React was one of those ways of building software that gave me back the giddy excitement I had learning Visual Basic as a kid.", "excerpt": "React was one of those ways of building software that gave me back the giddy excitement I had learning Visual Basic as a kid. It\u2019s hard to explain, but the way everything was encapsulated as a component just clicked for me and suddenly the whole app could be composed. I think it was when they introduced functional components. And when it comes to hooks, I love them. Not to say other frameworks didn\u2019t do the same, the", "context": "", "use_case": "building UIs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Does Anybody Actually Like React?"}, {"id": 772412864, "item_id": 48275804, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48275804", "by": "zarzavat", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "React is really, really good at the thing it was designed for: building interactive UIs.", "excerpt": "People hate on React because it's popular. That popularity alienates people whose use cases aren't served well by React and they wonder what the fuss is about. But React is really, really good at the thing it was designed for: building interactive UIs. You can even build native apps. Can you build a native app in htmx? Most of the alternatives to React are simplifying alternatives. They aim to take complexity away in", "context": "", "use_case": "interactive UIs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Does Anybody Actually Like React?"}, {"id": 772391409, "item_id": 48274463, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274463", "by": "TheRoque", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it seems like it's a huge bloated mess.", "excerpt": "I use Angular 2+, and I find it quite pleasant to use. I also like how they make the framework evolve. Not scared to have opinions (back when it came out, Typescript was barely a thing). Never got into React (but didn't try that hard to get into it), but it seems like it's a huge bloated mess.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Does Anybody Actually Like React?"}, {"id": 761606641, "item_id": 47600415, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47600415", "by": "lukechu10", "date": "2026-04-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "has a lot of performance footguns (looking at you useRef and useMemo)", "excerpt": "Unlike other UI libraries, I would say Sycamore has a very clear execution model. If you've used something like React before, there is all this thing about component lifecycles and hook rules where the component functions run over and over again when anything changes. This can all end up being fairly confusing and has a lot of performance footguns (looking at you useRef and useMemo). In sycamore, the component functi", "context": "", "use_case": "UI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Sycamore \u2013 next gen Rust UI library powered by fine-grained reactivity"}, {"id": 750821472, "item_id": 46926342, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46926342", "by": "FpUser", "date": "2026-02-07", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've never did see any value in monsters like React.", "excerpt": "I've never did see any value in monsters like React. Always use plain JavaScript, wrote web components and used some narrow scope 3rd party libraries. Works like a charm for me. Now instead of writing whole web components on my own I write skeletons with some comments and ask IDE with AI services (I use IDEs from JetBrains) to complete it. I then do the same with tee main application. So far the results are stellar. ", "context": "", "use_case": "web frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Software Engineering Is Back"}, {"id": 741483361, "item_id": 46342710, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46342710", "by": "nymanjon", "date": "2025-12-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I find React to be really complex.", "excerpt": "Here's an example offline-first hypermedia-driven soccer application. The match page is the most complex part of the application and I use Morphdom to just do a diff on the main section of the page. I find hypermedia-driven development to be super simple. I find React to be really complex. What normally takes me just some HTML rendered from the back end and some interactivity on the front end can be done in just a fe", "context": "writes CRUD apps", "use_case": "front end", "switched_from": "", "story": "Please just try HTMX"}, {"id": 741159552, "item_id": 46322472, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322472", "by": "csomar", "date": "2025-12-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The reason I use React is to create components that can exist on their own", "excerpt": "If you don't need React, you probably don't need a framework anyway. The reason I use React is to create components that can exist on their own (and can be constructed/visualized on a StoryBook) and these components will then play nice with other React components. And then use JSX to make reasoning about the code simple. That's not what htmx is. > htmx is a library that allows you to access modern browser features di", "context": "", "use_case": "component-based UIs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Please just try HTMX"}, {"id": 741052097, "item_id": 46315756, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46315756", "by": "bobjordan", "date": "2025-12-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the training data for React is so massive and the patterns so standardized that the AI productivity gains are impossible to ignore.", "excerpt": "I\u2019ve been a fan of this philosophy since the Intercooler.js days. In fact, our legacy customer portal at bomquote.com still runs on Intercooler. I spent the last year building a new version using the \"modern\" version of that stack: Flask, HTMX, Alpine, and Tailwind. However, I\u2019ve recently made the difficult decision to rewrite the frontend in React (specifically React/TS, TanStack Query, Orval, and Shadcn). In a perf", "context": "builds customer portal bomquote.com", "use_case": "frontend with AI assistance", "switched_from": "HTMX", "story": "Please just try HTMX"}]}