Just Fucking Use React.

Look, I get it. You saw that other site. “HTML is king”, “Keep it simple, stupid”, “My GeoCities page from ‘98 still loads faster than your SPA.”. Fucking adorable. Like a toddler proudly showing off a mud pie.

…

Because you’re not just displaying static text from a fucking stone tablet, are you? You want to build something interactive, something dynamic, something that doesn’t make your users want to gouge their eyes out with a rusty spoon. You want to build an application, not a fucking flyer.

A response to Just fucking use HTML, which I must admit, I do agree with.

Obviously as well, with some spicy language.

I’ve built sites with the intent of being as little or no JavaScript as possible, with tools like Templ to retain good serverside developer experience, and sprinkling in htmx where sensible in some sites for added functionality you don’t get out of <a> and <form> and such.

But… many sites are not just sites, they are applications.

React’s own description of itself is “the library for web and native user interfaces”, for something static and lacking much in the way of an interface, plain HTML is king (Astro being my choice of tools to achieve this sort of site), but if you need bells and whistles and batteries… just choose React.

To speak to other frameworks like Svelte / Vue / Solid / etc. , I think it stands you can use those as well for sure, but, React is the big dog in this space, its hard not to be the default for most folks / companies.