React

What hackers pick instead

• htmxA small, dependency-free library that adds interactivity to server-rendered HTML with a few attributes, avoiding heavy JavaScript frameworks; critics say complex, stateful apps hit limits.320recommend
• SvelteA compiled frontend framework praised for simple reactivity, closeness to plain HTML/CSS/JS and fast output; critics cite a smaller ecosystem and LLM confusion between Svelte 4 and 5.151recommend
• VueAn easy-to-tame reactive UI framework with single-file components and good interop, though critics dislike its custom template syntax and the painful Vue 2 to 3 migration.121recommend
• AngularOpinionated framework that people pick for consistent project structure, enterprise scale and long-term stability. Common caveat: boilerplate, frequent breaking releases, and heavy abstraction.82recommend
• SolidJSFast, small JavaScript framework with signal-based reactivity and first-class async, often recommended as a React alternative. Critics cite custom syntax, gotchas and harder debugging.69recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 1467 comments. Each links to the original.

1. Hooks made simple things simpler, but hard things harder, code with lots of boilerplate was replaced with code with leaky abstractions full of various workarounds

   Mixed · May 2026 · in “The React2Shell Story”

2. React done poorly can be slow. Bad code can just force the virtual DOM to diff unnecessarily 1000s of times and your app will still work fine for the most part.

   Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “JavaScript-heavy approaches are not compatible with long-term performance goals”

3. when you have complex state and need all your elements to update as that state changes, then the benefits of React (or similar frameworks) become more apparent

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “I Don't Like Magic”

4. react can be pure functions that take in props. Given a set of props, ideally data primitives, the outputted view is guaranteed. it's nice.

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Modern CSS Code Snippets: Stop writing CSS like it's 2015”

5. If what you're trying to build is a perfect match for the full set of abstractions React provides then it's gonna be cleaner to use React

   Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “AI, Tools and Transformation”

6. switching BACK to react eliminated these and enabled the LLM to continue writing features at no (current) technical or performance cost

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams”

7. A major feature of React (like Java) is the ability to reduce the blast radius of errant colleagues through much stricter boundaries.

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “You don't need React: creating a minimal UI library in Vanilla JavaScript”

8. the training data for React is so massive and the patterns so standardized that the AI productivity gains are impossible to ignore.

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Please just try HTMX”

9. before React had (a) hooks and (b) a stable context API and (c) tanstack-query/react-query or GraphQL - state handling WAS a mess

   Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “JavaScript-heavy approaches are not compatible with long-term performance goals”

10. Frameworks like React that add structure to the data flow, component encapsulation, and a huge repertoire of patterns to train on

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Moving away from Tailwind, and learning to structure my CSS”

11. This helps developers build complex UIs faster, but it adds extra memory and runtime overhead compared to simpler approaches.

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Vite 8.0 Is Out”

12. React and Svelte and the rest can read clunkily at times but they have a clear separation of concerns and I’m glad for that.

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Marko – A declarative, HTML‑based language”

13. it's too easy to write something an order of magnitude more complex than it needs to be if you don't know what you're doing

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “Does Anybody Actually Like React?”

14. I would rather maintain a vibe coded frontend that uses well organised react components than some huge vanilla js codebase.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Ask HN: Does Claude Code remove the need for so many front-end frameworks?”

15. especially with contexts it's very easy to express all of this complex interconnected state of a webapp in a consistent way

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Modern CSS Code Snippets: Stop writing CSS like it's 2015”

16. an agent can work with 2-4 react components for a current ticket without needing to know each line of internal React code

    Recommends · Nov 2026 · in “The AI cost of JavaScript frameworks”

17. In vanilla JS even small SPA projects can end up tangled or you are hand compiling what React would do for you for free.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Why Vanilla JavaScript”

18. it succeeds because it has a scalable abstractions which have relatively good ROI when you learn it even with its warts

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Does Anybody Actually Like React?”

19. Most importantly: readability. Even if components are only 90% pure, I still see side-effects and state clearly marked.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Does Anybody Actually Like React?”

20. I think a lot of the continued success of React comes from people continuing to choose its set of tradeoffs over others

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Why don't more developers “use the platform”?”

21. The problem with React is that mediocre developers can use it to build big things that are too big for them to handle.

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “Why is Meta destroying its engineering organization?”

22. spinning up vite + react is trivial, doesn't pull a ton of dependencies, and makes it easy to build anything you want

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “The Rust React Compiler is now native in Vite”

23. the way everything was encapsulated as a component just clicked for me and suddenly the whole app could be composed

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Does Anybody Actually Like React?”

24. React is fine. It's main problem is a lack of guardrails to stop bad engineering cultures from doing stupid things.

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “Does Anybody Actually Like React?”

25. I like the React model of components being (ideally) a function of state, but I don't touch hooks where possible.

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “Does Anybody Actually Like React?”

26. if you are using jquery/vanilla to shove state into your HTML, you probably actually do need something like react

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “jQuery 4.0.0 Released”

27. It’s much nicer (as a developer— not necessarily UX) to have a single paradigm and approach to building your app

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “The Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button”

28. Why do people use React to code things where data doesn't even change, or changes so little that to sync it with the UI does not present any challenge whatsoever

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Karpathy on Programming”

29. One of the most hyped features of React was a 'virtual DOM' that supposedly improved rendering speed, but actually did not significantly improve performance.

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Why is Meta destroying its engineering organization?”

30. The original react documentation is fine, but focused almost entirely on class components. What was there on hooks was either outdated or outright harmful.

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “Why don't more developers “use the platform”?”

31. modern node-based web development with tens of thousands of npm dependencies and thirteen separately-documented API and deployment environemnts to learn

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Please just try HTMX”

32. If you need modern hardware to run a react app with the same performance as a svelte/vue/solid app on low-hardware, something is fundamentally wrong.

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “JavaScript-heavy approaches are not compatible with long-term performance goals”

33. React has painted itself into a usability and optimisation nightmare corner by insisting that components are the most granular level of resctivity.

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Ripple: The Elegant TypeScript UI Framework”

34. you can't actually write regular JS in components since hooks have so many rules that bind the developer in a very specific way of writing code

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “RCE Vulnerability in React and Next.js”

35. Like the browserify Node polyfills, babel-polyfill and runtime with core-js, React -> fbjs, Material UI -> JSS and plugins, styled-components.

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “Why are good developers so wary of agentic development?”

36. Lots of strategies/patterns promoted and blindly followed without a brief reflection that maybe this is a bad solution for certain problems.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “You can't design software you don't work on”

37. spent so much time worried about component rendering cycles, hooks, state that just ended up distracting me away from time on the UI and UX

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Stronk.app – open-source gym lifts journal”

38. It's like SaaS for developers, only instead of paying a monthly subscription in cash, you have to pay a monthly subscription in man-hours.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “RCE Vulnerability in React and Next.js”

39. using the built-in language features... {enable && } for conditional rendering, or {collection.map(x => } for looping are not the most obvious choices

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “Does Anybody Actually Like React?”

40. I did a lot of React development (as in the frontend web framework) before making Easel and was quite inspired by how it hooks to change.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)”