Does anybody like React?

React was incredible right until the end of the class based react components. It all became fucky really quickly past that point. These days I feel React is a tool that is foisted upon me, not one I choose on technical merits.

No, I prefer much lighter frameworks that are closer to web standards, such as LitElement, which is a relatively light wrapper around Web Component standards. yes, they are slightly clunky, but they work great without a build step. I just edit the code and reload the page, no need to worry about a 5MB bundle. Unless you are writing code that is deployed to a million users running on Nokia brick phone browsers, it works great.

I like it, but only in its truest sense: A view library. Various parts of the ecosystem are horrible even if they don't pertain to react. I like jotai because its elegant as a global state library (React context has too much boilerplate).

But the thing is, React and others is useful only for a few specific cases, IMO. I would only feel the need for them if we're building truly interactive applications (Open Street Map, figma, a text editor,...), but only because they've taken care of the state management boilerplate (even if you're now boxed by their applications. But most apps on the web don't needs to be an SPA. They can actually be improved by being a multi page application with small islands of interactivity.

i much prefer svelte but the rest of the world does not

I'm really sorry to say this, but I actually love React

I've never been a front-end developer in my entire career until 2026 working on a mature (but new to me) project with react in it: This shit is spaghetti.

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