I work on regular ol' websites, that have some pages containing some moderate interactivity – so a few years ago the project adopted React to handle the frontend. I've found the experience mostly OK, but I sometimes get the urge to simplify things by leaning more on server-rendering / maybe using the URL to capture state...
and then realize I can't, and that this is Just The Way It Is Now. Because now all our devs expect to use React (or more accurately, its vast ecosystem of 3rd party functions of varying quality) to accomplish anything, and we forgot to screen for hires who can write their own JS+HTML or who understand how the response/request process works in a web application. (oops!)
"React hires are easy to hire for" so that often drives decisions, but I am skeptical my project ever needed React (or any hyper-optimized-for-SPAs-feature).
It just makes adding simple stuff so slow. Instead of a query, and and HTML template, you have a query built on top a shambles of a system that outputs JSON, passes it to another monstrosity that is our Dojo frontend. I have tried to create some static pages, but everything is so baked in to the mess we have, getting around the login is a major obstacle.
I work on regular ol' websites, that have some pages containing some moderate interactivity – so a few years ago the project adopted React to handle the frontend. I've found the experience mostly OK, but I sometimes get the urge to simplify things by leaning more on server-rendering / maybe using the URL to capture state...
and then realize I can't, and that this is Just The Way It Is Now. Because now all our devs expect to use React (or more accurately, its vast ecosystem of 3rd party functions of varying quality) to accomplish anything, and we forgot to screen for hires who can write their own JS+HTML or who understand how the response/request process works in a web application. (oops!)
"React hires are easy to hire for" so that often drives decisions, but I am skeptical my project ever needed React (or any hyper-optimized-for-SPAs-feature).