The ground is shaky in the web development realm. The React ecosystem is turbulent, currently dominant paradigms are being questioned and old ones, revisited. Overall, developers just don't seem to be happy with the state of things.

I'm one of them. React is pretty much all I've ever known to a deeper extent in web development. Though I grew to appreciate it over time, I've been concerned about React lately. It's changed. Now it is best used within frameworks, supposedly. There's Next.js, Remix, Gatsby... Just what we all needed: more tools on top of tools on top of tools. Each with its own sets of standards.

Web development has become too complex over the years. There aren't just a dozen different libraries, there are frameworks and meta-frameworks to each of these. We've abstracted so far from God the browser and the DOM that switching from one library, framework or meta-framework to another can be a hassle; that being actually good at any of these requires so much time that there's little time left to explore others. So much so that "React developer" (not front-end or web developer) has become a thing. Now, I have to fear for a future where there are Next.js developers, Remix developers, Gatsby developers and more.

Mark Erikson addressed the increasing complexity complaint on his response to Matteo Frana's post "React, where are you going?" by claiming that you can still use React whichever way you like. This is true for small personal projects, but not so much for others. The expectations and trends set by the React team matter, as Frana himself rebutted:

I can assure you that many potential customers, especially digital agencies, have expressed that they would not even consider using our React Bricks library if they couldn't use it with the Next App folder. So, the FOMO pressure is high.

It's not a coincidence, I don't think, that HTMX gained so much traction in 2023. It offers us a glimpse of a simpler past and what could (if only maybe) be a simpler, more hypermedia-driven future for the web. Do we really need all these complicated libraries and frameworks to handle DOM manipulations on fat clients? If this question didn't resonate with developers, having only heard about HTMX from others I myself would probably have never found out about it. But here we are.

It's no surprise web developers aren't happy. Instead of making things simpler, the largest part of the established ecosystem is further escalating the complexity, as React morphs into a framework dependency, throwing web developers a curveball. For one, if I just need to put a nail on a wall, I'd rather do it with a hammer than a battering ram. More than ever, I'm considering other approaches to web development and I sure hope others are too.