Frontend Design, React, and a Bridge over the Great Divide

Default Isn’t Design

Framework monoculture is a psychology problem as much as a tech problem. When one approach becomes “how things are done,” we unconsciously defend it even when standards would give us a healthier, more interoperable ecosystem. Psychologists call this reflex System Justification.

The explains a lot about React-driven front-end development!

When a single toolset becomes the default, we don’t just prefer it, we build narratives that justify it. And that’s when a tool quietly becomes a gate or even a destructive force.

React, Electron, and LLMs have a common purpose: the labour arbitrage theory of dev tool popularity – Baldur Bjarnason

An insightful and incisive appraisal of technology adoption. This truth hits hard:

React and the component model standardises the software developer and reduces their individual bargaining power excluding them from a proportional share in the gains. Its popularity among executives and management is entirely down to the fact that it helps them erase the various specialities – CSS, accessibility, standard JavaScript in the browser, to name a few – from the job market. Those specialities might still exist in practice – as ad hoc and informal requirements during teamwork – but, as far as employment is concerned, they’re such a small part of the overall developer job market that they might as well be extinct.

HTML Web Components: An Example - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

Here’s an excellent case study of an HTML web component. Jim starts by showing how you’d create the component in React; then he shows how you’d do it as a JavaScript web component; finally he shows the way to do it as an HTML web component:

The point is we’re starting with a baseline, core experience that will provide basic functionality and content to a wide array of user agents before any JavaScript is required.

Once you’ve done everything you can in vanilla HTML to provide core elements of your baseline experience, you can begin enhancing the existing markup with additional functionality.

This is where HTML web components shine.

Two articles on SPA or SPA-like sites vs alternatives — Piper Haywood

On framework-dependency and longevity:

So it’s not even so much about being wary of React or Vue, it’s about not making assumptions, being cautious and cognizant of future needs or restrictions when proposing a tech stack. Any tech stack you choose will ultimately become a ball-and-chain, not just those based on JavaScript frameworks. It’s just that the ball can sometimes be heavier than it needed to be, and you can anticipate that with a little foresight.

The radium craze | Eric Bailey

The radioactive properties of React.