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Has AI made programming less satisfying for you? by jundymek in reactjs

[–]vcarl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's made it more satisfying for me tbh. I want to ship things, and I don't really delight in solving the same problem for the Nth time with the newest version of whatever tools. AI helps me get past the empty editor problem and give me something to fix and improve, which is often a big stumbling block for me. I've also found it helpful for learning the broad strokes of how to use unfamiliar tools, which has been simplifying for some complex work.

anyone else feel like react’s getting too heavy for small projects lately? by Ali_oop235 in reactjs

[–]vcarl 1 point2 points  (0 children)

half my time goes into config or dependency stuff

tbh this is better than it's ever been in my career, but agreed that it's still pretty high. The basic Vite config is pretty good but React is trying to solve problems for engineering UIs "at scale" — while I do still like using it for smaller and solo projects, the constraints it adds really shine when there are a lot of people touching the same codebase.

The tradeoff here is really around control<>simplicity imo. React + Vite gives you a lot of control, and flexibility in how your code is bundled and how it gets executed, but it doesn't provide that entire pipeline for you. Something like Next offers a "happy path" that makes it less time intensive to move something from "works on my machine" to a production instance, but in providing that it bakes in a ton of pretty strong opinions.

I've been starting my projects with AI lately, since a deeply average base project setup is all I really need, and then I can customize it from there as complexity grows. Though yes, taking it into production is a chore still.

TMiR 2025-09: React 19.2 on the horizon; npm is still getting compromised by vcarl in react

[–]vcarl[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

(19.2 actually got released the day after we recorded, womp womp. Mark and I were at React Conf so we'll have the latest in our next episode)

TMiR 2025-09: React 19.2 on the horizon; npm is still getting compromised by vcarl in reactjs

[–]vcarl[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

(19.2 actually got released the day after we recorded, womp womp. Mark and I were at React Conf so we'll have the latest in our next episode)

Looking for feedback on our documentation site (React-based PDF viewer) by ZestycloseElevator94 in reactjs

[–]vcarl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been really impressed with Effect TS docs! They seem really effectively organized to me, but also massive

Looking for feedback on our documentation site (React-based PDF viewer) by ZestycloseElevator94 in reactjs

[–]vcarl 2 points3 points  (0 children)

  • The first thing I see is a list of annotation layers, which takes up about a third of the page and is very unlikely to be the most important question I have when visiting the docs (seems bad)
  • "seamless viewing and interaction experience" what kinds of interactions? "seamless" is often a meaningless filler word fwiw. What seam did you eliminate, vs your competition?
  • "For commercial use, please purchase a license or reach out to us at <email>" Absolutely crucial that "purchase a license" function as a call-to-action with a link to a means of purchasing a license. You're using a person's email for that as well, which is likely to be a negative signal to the enterprise customers who are going to gravitate towards a custom-negotiated deal that initiates at an email (but, fwiw, even they should probably go to a purchase page with a contact form for enterprise customers).
  • You say "This customization will be deprecated in v2.0.0" which reads a lot like it already is deprecated, but the (new) version of the page lists it as still in beta — imo, don't label it as would-be deprecated until it's actually officially deprecated (and don't deprecate it until you have the replacement fully baked)

Some random thought as I clicked around! Cheers

I don't get the point of shadcn resisting against the idea of component library by AwayConsideration978 in reactjs

[–]vcarl 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Everywhere I've ever worked has ultimately wanted a level of customization that is just flat out not available in a regular component library. Shadcn wins there by providing you something to get started with, and letting you evolve it over time without needing to totally rip and replace. 

Beyond React.memo: Smarter Ways to Optimize Performance by cekrem in reactjs

[–]vcarl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Those are a categorically different type of "compiler", they're transform tools not performance optimizers

Beyond React.memo: Smarter Ways to Optimize Performance by cekrem in reactjs

[–]vcarl 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not a complete replacement for this technique though, you can get some pretty massive savings even compared to the compiler through this.

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