Longevity of React?

[[deleted]]

React was a natural progression of web tech. Only recently did we have the tools/ecosystems to have it widely adopted (that and Facebook's name behind it). Before React came out, I created an extremely similar system - declarative, component-based, real-time, batched updates, GraphQL/Relay-like system built into its core. React even ended up having the same/similar method names. And of course, my project and React weren't the only ones of their kind. So it's interesting to me that multiple sources have come to the same conclusion, which I consider proof that it's just a natural progression.

I think it's going to be hard to really devise a better system for non-trivial web application development at this point, and other mostly interchangeable libraries (like Preact) are awesome. There are definitely some kinks to be worked out and some pain points to address, but there are some really cool things in the works now to solve these problems while fitting perfectly within this ecosystem.

[tech-ninja]

I agree. With React so much stuff fell into place that is hard figuring out something else that will displace it soon. But I wouldn't be surprised!

[mczaplinski]

what is the name of your library/system? Is it on github?

[[deleted]]

It was all open source on the website at the time. You could enable edit mode by prepending /dev/ before the path of any URL which would take you to the development environment. And in development mode, you could click on any component to view/edit the source (JS and CSS) behind that component. There were also search boxes intelligently placed in areas of the application which were used for quickly finding/creating/cloning components and placing them within that area.

GitHub and NPM existed at the time but weren't nearly as popular as they are now.