---
layout: ../layouts/BlogPost.astro
title: Kind of annoyed at React
slug: annoyed-at-react
description: 'Just a little ranty rant about my fave JS library, ya know.'
tags:
  - technical
  - musings
added: 2024-01-13T00:00:00.000Z
---

I'm kind of annoyed at the state of React lately. I still use it regularly, and am somewhat friendly with the folks that work on it still, and it's the first library I reach for, but... it's just gotten too confusing and frustrating.

Not to boast but I like... really know React. I've used it for almost a decade. I've seen it morph and grow and used the frameworks that have popped up to work with it, I've written dozens of articles and tutorials for it, I was in the React 18 Working Group and other related groups before that, and before the pandemic, I taught React full time. So trust me when I say: **React's gotten really hard to understand.**

I feel like the lack of understanding comes from not communicating properly with the community (both educational content and also transparency about what/how/etc things are being built), and it frustrates me.

It's frustrating to see that there hasn't been a release [since June 2022](https://github.com/facebook/react/releases/tag/v18.2.0). It's frustrating that the core team all spouted "use a framework!" with React 18 and then most of the vocal ones left their jobs to join \[a company that owns a large React framework] and \[that framework] seems to use Canary releases rather than the one that's stable and out in the world (and it seems like a "cool kid" monopoly). It's frustrating that they took *so long* to write new documentation (and the folks writing them weren't properly supported) that if you look up "React documentation" the new docs aren't even the first result. It's frustrating that there's [two Reacts](https://overreacted.io/the-two-reacts/) now (not that there shouldn't be, but that it's not clear/an easily understandable mental model for most people). It's frustrating that diversity efforts [visibly took a backseat](https://twitter.com/rachelnabors/status/1586772024252583936) with React leadership and there's just not as many voices from a variety of different people anymore.

Bleh, anyway. I really didn't mean for this to be a negative nancy post. I've harped on the React team's communication before and I do think they've gotten a bit better. And again, I still reach for React when I want to build something somewhat complex, I just... wish I were happier about it when I do. I'm optimistic for the future. Kind of.