Comment by aatd86
3 months ago
> the world seems to have settled on using React.
The world might have, but I personally have not!!! x(
(I don't think the world really has, the same way the world moved on from jQuery at some point :) and jQuery was probably more widespread)
jQuery is used far more than React. https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/javascript_library
But if you compare google trends you will find that the crossover point of react vs jQuery was somewhere around 2018. In other terms, jQuery usage was much more widespread but it is not used for new projects anymore.
The trends of Google search doesn't imply anything by itself, just that less people search Google for jQuery than React. Which isn't entirely surprising in my view - people use search engines to learn about something they're unfamiliar with. That doesn't necessarily correlate with increased usage. I've searched for React (although not on Google) but never used it.
It wouldn't be too much work to understand a bit more about the comparative usage. Looking at recent commits of projects on GitHub would be a good start, but also skewed towards open source projects which doesn't represent all actual usage of course.
Another way would be to look through historic changes to websites to see if there's any changes to the source. It'd be a bit complicated because content changes don't necessarily mean anyone is touching jQuery or React pieces.
This also ignores any sort of private usage, which you won't get any reliable data on, and may represent a significant amount of actual usage.
At the end of the day, there's only so much accurate data available to make accurate conclusions about usage of software libraries that don't phone home. The best data available, as far as I'm concerned, is what I posted earlier - and it's still not perfect and doesn't support any claims other than what the data shows.
As a side note, I don't have any dog in this race. I do think it's interesting to get a better understanding of what pieces of software are being used, by whom, in what amount, etc. but it's difficult.
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