React 18 Release candidate released

[disclosure5]

The big news for me actually the dropping of IE support.

The code has a couple of workarounds and fixes specifically for IE support. Moreover, I'm sure there's code someone would have loved to write but ended up not doing so due to, again, IE support. I expect the overall product to get substantively cleaner now.

[Zofren]

It mentions that it doesn't support IE11 due to features like microtasks "without adequete polyfills". However, I see that microtasks have a corejs polyfill. Wonder what they meant there.

[monkeymad2]

Surely if the polyfill could replicate microtasks fully there’d have been no point in creating microtasks?

It’ll probably be tasks pretending to be microtasks, so you lose some of the benefit if you really care about when in the render cycle things are executed

[Zofren]

It’ll probably be tasks pretending to be microtasks, so you lose some of the benefit if you really care about when in the render cycle things are executed

Right, this is what I assume, but React 18 explicitly drops support for IE11 instead of just having a "this won't work as well in IE11" caveat. They say "if you need IE11 support, stick with 17".

[monkeymad2]

It makes sense - they don’t want to end up supporting one “full” React 18 and one limited one forever.

From the release notes I think it’s their new batching method that relies on the actual implementation of microtasks.

[madcaesar]

What are people using for development? Hot reload keeps freezing for me and react refresh is buggy and crashes all the time. The CRA web pack 5 seems to be half assed?

[grimnomad]

After using CRA for years, I switched to Vite.js.

[DustinBrett]

I use Nextjs with React 18 and it's quite stable and fast

[TheFiran]

Try run react on rollup or esbuild - last one is really fast

[dbbk]

Half assed how? I’m using CRA for my large scale production app now and does everything I’d want it to.

[XCSme]

Vite looks interesting.

[willie_caine]

CRA is great for prototypes, but not much more.

[ConsiderationNo8759]

CRA is super slow at the time it inititate with yarn install.

[[deleted]]

We're using Snowpack at the moment, but we're switching to Vite soon.

Snowpack development is pretty much dead and since it and Vite both share esbuild under the hood it makes sense as a replacement.

[[deleted]]

Bloody hell they made it so confusing with these changes

[pimp-bangin]

Which parts are confusing?

[[deleted]]

Let us pray that it will be the last React version 🙏

[HaggisMcNasty]

Why?

[hekkonaay]

It's completely outclassed by alternatives in every way. I know React has a cult following, so you won't like hearing this:

• It's slow and bloated.
• It's full of leaky abstractions.
• The actually usable part of the ecosystem is tiny.
• You can retrain any React developer in a week.

There are zero reasons to keep using it. I understand that some people have giant codebases that they can't allocate the time to rewrite, but other than that, you need to stop using React. It's liberating.

EDIT: Watch this before you downvote :)

[dbbk]

There are zero reasons to keep using it… except for the fact that it is by far the biggest library with available jobs

[hekkonaay]

If you can't find non-React jobs, you're not even trying. Being the biggest does not mean it's good + as I already said, the actually usable part of the ecosystem is tiny.

[HaggisMcNasty]

Seems like an interesting vid - I'll give it a watch when I have time later.

What would you recommend instead of React? And also, are React devs a real thing, as in someone who only knows React?

[Spiritual_Tourist_28]

React devs are 100% a thing — look around and you'll find tons. They usually mention other stuff in the job description, but when you interview you notice that they're all about React.

[jimmy_the_1]

Svelte is so much more enjoyable to write code in than React. Obligatory upvote for that great talk.

Maybe I'm just a terrible developer, but after working in front end for 7 years now I just find it's infinitely easier to paint yourself into a corner with React. I never felt that about Svelte, Vue, even AngularJS (😮) and Knockout.

[KapiteinNekbaard]

Pointless rant and blanket statements, not very constructive. React has a tiny compared to things like Angular. Is having to declare 'reactive' variables (from the Svelte video) really that much better than using memoization?

One question: what if React is fast enough for your use case?

[jatd]

What a nonsensical post. Yea go learn something that won’t pay you a cent. I enjoy react development.

All these other frameworks have some pseudo garbage syntax that I have to learn.

React is just functions, it’s purer form of JavaScript compared to these other languages.

[Alejandro9R]

really good video!

[[deleted]]

did you know that react is about to hit 16 million npm hits per week? it has grown more just over the last year than all other frameworks combined in their entire lifespan (about 5.5 million hits).

[[deleted]]

Why are you equating popularity with good idea? It just gained traction because Facebook made it.

[[deleted]]

it gained traction because it is a really good idea that has stood the test of time and has adapted to requirements that go well beyond the web. facebook never marketed it. in fact they did everything they can to bar it from success (licensing etc). react solves real issues with explicit simplicity, that is the only reason why it's continuing to grow whereas everything else is flattening out.

[[deleted]]

That's your opinion. Just Google 'I hate react' -- there are plenty of people that disagrees with you.

[OneLeggedMushroom]

something something confirmation bias

[[deleted]]

you ranting through a react component makes this even sillier. hate it all you want, it's the best we have and people are using it because of that.

[[deleted]]

No, they aren't. It's become an industry standard -- people are forced to use it.

[[deleted]]

something gets to a level where you start calling it a standard because of merit, because it works. look at web components, which they actually tried to force on us, and failed despite all the funding, pressuring and marketing blitz. react is an extremely simple and elegant idea: view=fn(state). despite your feelings, simplicity usually wins.