> React sucked for years, with a terrible doc, a crippling webpack experience and breaking compact all the time.
Webpack wasn't how it started, remember gulp?
Also don't forget the switch from class components to functions, then inventing "hook" functions to reintroduce functionality that already existed in the class components.
For the past few years I've been on a team that handles a legacy system from long before React existed (internal) that just renders HTML directly, a client website that uses Backbone, and a newer client website that uses modern React. The old internal one that doesn't use any frontend frameworks has been by far the nicest to work with, and Backbone the worst.
I think that's some missing context as well - React+Redux was much better than what came immediately before it, for complex web apps. But when you're not building something like that, yeah, both are worse. It just doesn't seem like the Backbone era encouraged people to use it for everything, unlike React.
Webpack wasn't how it started, remember gulp?
Also don't forget the switch from class components to functions, then inventing "hook" functions to reintroduce functionality that already existed in the class components.
For the past few years I've been on a team that handles a legacy system from long before React existed (internal) that just renders HTML directly, a client website that uses Backbone, and a newer client website that uses modern React. The old internal one that doesn't use any frontend frameworks has been by far the nicest to work with, and Backbone the worst.
I think that's some missing context as well - React+Redux was much better than what came immediately before it, for complex web apps. But when you're not building something like that, yeah, both are worse. It just doesn't seem like the Backbone era encouraged people to use it for everything, unlike React.