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This thread is the biggest crock of shit. It's a blog post about React, he's obviously not saying "don't use literally any libraries whatsoever".

The vast majority of libs that sit on top of React are completely useless time wasters that cost you more in dev time in the long run than writing it yourself. Just React, CSS and the Chrome dev tools is more "power" than like 99% of dev environments that have ever existed. The fact so many garbage front enders think you need to pile 80 more dependencies on top of the bog standard stuff is a joke.

Avoiding libraries as a default and knowing when to make an exception is the most important part of being a front end dev these days. Reaching for libraries as a default solution to any problem (which is what 90% of FE devs do) is a great way to fuck up every project you're on.



There is a huge class of people that aren't capable (either they're too junior or lack the ability or motivation) of writing core functionality themselves, and are only able to stitch libraries together. Is the stuff they create painful to use? Generally yea. Does it create enormous technical debt for the rest of the team? Yep. But does it tick feature boxes that people pay money for? Also yea.

I think for those folks, "prefer writing your own 'ReactFlyout' module" is literally not a path forward. Like it or not, those folks make up a large portion of the work force.

There are software organizations that live by a "prefer renting and buying over building it" tenet, for the same reasons that outsourcing made sense to the MBA types. But when you all of a sudden need to render a button differently, or a service goes down, they refuse to take any responsibility for the mess.




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