Comment by wsatb
3 days ago
Wow, this is a weird a comment. Who are "they"? You sound like you think there's some giant conspiracy against JS frameworks. Is the Illuminati behind this? I kid, but a browser feature is kind of what it is. It can take years for features to make it into enough browsers to make them usable. It's quite a bit different than the fluidness of a JS framework.
This discussion comes up all the time and I always have the same response: not everyone needs a full-on framework for what they're doing. They also may need to share that code with other teams using other frameworks or even third parties. The post even mentions that web components may not be a good fit for you.
> Who are "they"? You sound like you think there's some giant conspiracy against JS frameworks.
Yes. There is. The main developers and proselityzers were completely insanely biased against web frameworks (especially React).
It wasn't even a conspiracy. All you had to do was to follow Alex Russel (the person who introduced the idea of web components in the first place) and see his interactions with framework authors and his views towards web frameworks.
The new people in the space driving the specs are hardly any better. E.g. their reactions to Ryan Carniato's rather mild criticism of Web Components is just filled with vile, bile, and hate.
They literally refuse to even admit they have a problem, or want to look at any other solutions than the ones they cook up.
> but a browser feature is kind of what it is. It can take years for features to make it into enough browsers to make them usable.
Strange, browsers push dozens of specs for web components without ever taking any time to see if the yet another half-baked "solution" is actually workable.
Some links to examples of the sort of behaviour you're describing would be really helpful here (I say this as someone who is sympathetic - I work with on a web component/Lit codebase in my 9-5 and I'm not a fan, compared to the React workflow I had in a past life).
Unfortunately, as most of them left Twitter they also temoved all their accounts, so you can only see responses from framework authors like Rich Harris.
But here's a very on-brand toot from Alex Russel: https://toot.cafe/@slightlyoff/113222280712758802
This is the article he's reacting to: https://dev.to/ryansolid/web-components-are-not-the-future-4...
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Or here's Lou Verou (a TAG member) calling it hate (this is the mildest reaction, btw): https://x.com/LeaVerou/status/1840134654852247765 and uncritically reposting a bullshit article calling it excellent https://x.com/LeaVerou/status/1839736908370587947 (see reaction by Vue author: https://x.com/youyuxi/status/1839833110164504691 and https://x.com/youyuxi/status/1839834941884121363)
Note that Lea Verou also says that people decided to fix some things around web components after her post in 2020: https://lea.verou.me/blog/2024/wcs-vs-frameworks/
Here's Rich Harris (author of Svelte) in 2019: https://x.com/Rich_Harris/status/1198332398561353728
Here's the 2022 Web Components Group report: https://w3c.github.io/webcomponents-cg/2022.html. Notice similarities?
Literally everything web framework authors have been saying for ever has been completely ignored in favor if the in-group/tribe.
Literally nothing has changed. Nothing at all.
Its not a conspiracy. It is just group behavior following a trend as loudly as possible.
Web components are a trend? I've been using them for close to 10 years and they're still not anywhere close to mainstream. Loudly as possible? They've quietly just kind of been there for years.
I think we have a generation of developers that only know React and they're so engrained with it they simply cannot imagine a world without it. If you really can't find a use case for web components then you're living in a bubble.
We have been through all this before with jQuery. The generation of JavaScript developers at the beginning on React only knew jQuery and they really wanted to shoehorn all the jQuery nonsense into the standards. From their perspective it makes complete sense because that is the only one way to do things. They got querySelectors into the DOM.
Now we are seeing the exact same thing again. People only know React, so they want the standards to look like the only one thing they know. That doesn't make it a good idea. Every time this comes up we exchange simplicity and performance for easiness and temporary emotional comfort. Its only a temporary win until the next generational trend comes along.
> If you really can't find a use case for web components then you're living in a bubble.
There's a very tiny use-case for web components. And even there it's riddled with a huge amount of potential (and actual) footguns that "in the bubble" devs have been talking about for a decade at this point, and some which were finally acknowledged: https://w3c.github.io/webcomponents-cg/2022.html (no updates since)
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