React, my old Friend

I started my journey in the front-end world back when frameworks weren't really a thing. I then decided to pick up Angular but didn't stick with it much longer. A new wave of excitement brought me back with React and it clicked so quickly that I felt at home. Ever since I diligently learned and practiced. I would pick up new patterns, libraries, testing frameworks and eventually established my battle tested stack.

Then hooks came out! Around that time my front-end work slowed down as I picked up Go. I invested time learning and using hooks. While they got rid of a lot of boilerplate I'm not quite sure they are a definitive win. Some very common patterns, like data fetching, feel awkward but I stuck with it for years now. Lately I have been dipping my toes again and I definitely lost the excitement that brought me to web dev. Between config frustration, too many abstractions, too many libraries that do the same thing, e2e tests that give you headaches I'm disenamored of the whole thing.

It's still somewhat of a comfort zone but I think I'm ready to look elsewhere. I want to stop the trend of automatically reaching for React for any front-end work and experiment with what's out there (Svelte, Vue, Lit, htmx, ...).

Thoughts

I am React tired and looking at the community I'm not the only one. I'm still not sure where I'll start experimenting, I have a few browser extension ideas, my budgeting app or maybe a totally new project! It's a normal feeling to get exhausted by the same awkward patterns and points of frustration. I notice too many "ugh"s when I have to get my hands dirty again and I think it's time to get frustrated somewhere else.