Comment by jodrellblank

Comment by jodrellblank 4 hours ago

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React's homepage says "The library for" and "Go full-stack with a framework. React is a library. It lets you put components together, but it doesn’t prescribe how to do routing and data fetching. To build an entire app with React, we recommend a full-stack React framework like Next.js or React Router." and "React is also an architecture. Frameworks that implement it let you..."

React's Wikipedia page says "React ... is a free and open-source front-end JavaScript library", and has no mention of Framework.

Why die on a hill that it "is" something it says it isn't?

[] https://react.dev/

[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/React_(software)

mablopoule 4 hours ago

> Why die on a hill that it "is" something it says it isn't?

There's plenty of guru who say that they are the reincarnation of Jesus and/or Buddha, doesn't mean that we have to take their word for it.

In the same vein, North Korea is officially the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea", even though it's obviously not a democracy.

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simonw 3 hours ago

> Why die on a hill that it "is" something it says it isn't?

Because I think they're wrong about that.

If you'd prefer a different metaphor this is windmill I will tilt at.

To provide a little more of a rationale: React code calls the code I write - the JSX and the handlers and suchlike.

It's also pretty uncommon to see React used at the same time as other non-React libraries that handle UI stuff.

Most importantly, the culture and ecosystem of React is one of a framework. You chose React at the start of a project and it then affects everything else you build afterwards.

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  • davnicwil 2 hours ago

    It's super interesting that you have this definition given your authorship of django (I mean, actually interesting, not 'interesting' :-)

    In another comment I used the example of rails as a kind of canonical 'framework' that can potentially do everything for you full stack, and django is in the same category, juxtaposed against something like React that cannot.

    To that, I think your last paragraph is the one I agree with most closely. It's true, but only for the view part of the app, right? I think that's where I get stuck on stretching to calling it a framework.

    I guess I can see it if you're defining your view/client as a separate logical entity from the rest of the stack. Which is totally reasonable. But I guess just not how I think about it.

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threatofrain 2 hours ago

The ecosystem is starting to move to the term metaframework to describe nextjs or tanstack. We're now getting layers upon layers upon layers.

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