Comment by shubhamjain

8 hours ago

This is the reason I absolutely hate shadcn. The number of dependencies and files you introduce for trivial components is insane. Even tiny little divs are their own component for no good reason. I genuinely don’t understand how front-end developers accept this level of needless complexity.

Shoutout to Basecoat UI[1], so implementing the same components using Tailwind and minimal JS. That's what I am preferring to use these days.

[1]: https://basecoatui.com/

> I genuinely don’t understand how front-end developers accept this level of needless complexity.

in my anecdotal experience as a bit of an old fogey with a greying beard, the enthusiastic juniors come along, watch a video by some YouTube guru (who makes videos about code for a living instead of making actual software) proselytizing about whatever the trendy new library is, and they assume that it's just what everyone uses and don't question it. It's not uncommon for them to be unaware that the vanilla elements even exist at times, such is the pervasiveness of React bloat.

  • Please name some names of these performative developer/engineers. I want to know how many are on my bingo card. Ill start, something imegen and tnumber geegee.

    • I don't really keep up with these Tech/Soft tubers, but watch a video on occasion. Can't really say I find something-imagen guilty of this, but like I said I watch the occasional video, not the stream. What I've watched from him is generally about what he agrees/disagrees with and he also tells you why he thinks that. Often reading articles/blogposts. Not to dismiss your opinion, but I would put him in the entertaining with substantive arguments category.

      IMO software education/tainment suffers much worse though. They teach you how to do X in only this specific way with these specific tools, generally sponsored. Not the admittedly far more boring basics to do it yourself, or how to actually use these tools in a broader sense.

Another shoutout to Basecoat. Easy to use. Makes your website look nice. Works with any/no framework.

I'd never heard of basecoat but it looks great. IMO this is what Tailwind UI should have been. It was utter stupidity that they forced you to use their preferred shiny new JS framework of the week for UI components.

> I genuinely don’t understand how front-end developers accept this level of needless complexity.

I call it 'Shiny Object Syndrome' - Frontend devs tend to love the latest new JS frameworks for some reason. The idea of something being long running, tried and tested and stable for 5-10 years is totally foreign to many FE devs.

Despite its age JS and its ecosystem have just never matured into a stable set of reliable, repeatable frameworks and libraries.