Solid vs React
The more I've learned about Solid JS and how it works specifically, the perf benefits from not needing to re render a ton of components every time any state changes and the signals. Especially with Solid Start coming out, in a year or two when solid start is way more stable, is there any good arguments supporting react over SolidJS, or Next/Remix over Solid Start? Other then maybe the fact that React at least for the foreseeable future has and will have more community support and is much more common.
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reacts mental model is much easier to understand for the most part imo
everything is a function, when the stuff it needs changes it rerenders, thats it
you also have to factor tooling around
libraries and such
yea and "other than the ecosystem" is kind of missing the point
ryan is the best and solid is really cool but i see react continuing to be number 1 for a very long time
for a personal project solid may be fine
but for a working team to pickup solid its a whole new beast
"why should a normal company care about solid and signals?" is kind of a difficult question imo
react perf is fine, you can hire bootcampers, who cares if the other thing is faster
every new jsx framework after react will be "better" in terms of performance and such
without react you probably wouldnt have these new frameworks to begin with
same with frameworks before react
I agree react's perf is totally fine, I just feel like writing in solid so much cleaner, and easier to predict what will happen once you do get over that hump of understanding solids mental model
the thing that replaces react is gonna have to be MUCH better than react in some meaningful way
to the point of like
"you'd have to be a complete idiot to write react now that x exists"
and i don't think thats true for solid at all
its an interesting framework that is very good and makes different compromises
Also, I totally understand that React will most likely be the #1 UI/framework for a long, long time, I just wonder if it will be better to adopt solid over react bc at least IMO the mental model makes more sense to how a framework should work
There is two kinds of adoptions
Developer adoption
And enterprise adoption
A dev can use whatever he wants on personal projects
But enterprise software can't ride too much on hypes
It's fucking expensive to rewrite
i think theres still more microservices being started in express than in fastify
Angular still in use on many enterprise stuff
as to what makes more sense, if you know you can hire or train for it and the ecosystem provides what you need, then sure
but the amazing thing about react is that if you are willing to fuck up your package.json and webpack config, for any problem you will ever come across someone probably wrote a package for it in 2017 that still barely works
React ecosystem is wayyy more mature than the solid one
Even Vue isn't that close to react ecosystem
On the west at 
yeah 100% totally understand that
With the pace things are moving, “in a year or two” is pretty far away. i don’t think anyone can really speak to solids future with certainty, especially this early
looking at today tho, these new frameworks are challenging react in some important and unprecedented ways (vue challenged it on dx and barrier to entry, but with a sufficiently saturated market of react devs, there’s little incentive to adopt vue for those reasons). Industry is taking note of reduced bug potential, perf cost savings, UX benefits, SEO benefits, poor network accessibility, and intelligent/extensible design (primitives etc). so these frameworks may make appearances in new codebases
due to reacts ecosystem, “time to delivery” can be hard to beat. tho, some companies roll their own bs and don’t care.
Objectively, react is not the best way to build sites nor software. but it can get you an “mvp” quickly while you determine how to optimize things down the line (if thats even necessary, for most its not).
I use solid because its simply a better model all around and i believe in writing the best software i can.
the rust community is also adopting its principles. this means the lessons learned in solid are applicable elsewhere too. the fact that i can prototype in solid and refine in rust l8r for any number of renders is pretty cool imo
Yeah that's the thing. It's been 6 years for me so like 1-2 years is relatively short in my timeline. Where things are at is kind of hard to talk about because as I've said in the past history is written by the victors. But what Solid represents is a much larger change than the aesthetics that people compare it to.
There is a reason why Signals are popping up everywhere from Preact to Angular. Why WASM performance in DOM is becoming viable. Why even frameworks like Vue who have been using reactivity for ages are entertaining experimental new renderers that are incompatible with their own ecosystem. Why I got hired at eBay was because the realization fine-grained reactivity solves the hydration problem. And as Qwik is attempting to become more optimal it is only getting closer and closer. Watch for the next version of Svelte change up how they handle Stores. I haven't seen anything yet, but these evolutions are sort of obvious from where I'm sitting.
I've allowed the narrative that Solid just incrementally improves on React across the board etc.. because its easier position. And it's true where things are. But Solid today is basically one take on the potential. What we've accomplished with the limited resources available to us building on these primitives. But represents a fraction of what is possible.
But there is a reason why when it comes to innovation in this space Solid keep showing up at the front of it. Even back when I was building it by myself. The game has already changed and the main ones who have realized it are other library/framework authors.
And it's ok. Adoption and this fact are not really close. The big moves in the industry happen when someone drops the ball, not because the new solution is better. Angular to Angular 2 was Angular's miss. So that takes off a lot of the pressure. Because let's face it many of you will continue to use React and you should. But we're going to be over here continuing to make the grass look a hell of a lot greener.
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Yeah its interesting because I think React was very effective in how they taught their philosophy and honestly they helped me figure out a few important things from it. But the degree to which you have to unlearn it to get back to vanilla JS. To use those escape hatches. To say create the framework yourself is astounding.
I've been developing a thought as of late that is isn't just how unleaky your abstractions are that define how effective the library/framework is. But how natural the escape hatches are. How painful are your
useEffects so to speak. Because every rule is built to be bent or broken. Every codebase strays from the perfect. I managed the same medium-large app in production for 8 years and one for 6 years before that. Nothing stays neat. That's where developers live. It has to be about primitives.
I like this quote. I think React might be difficult. I respect a lot of what they do and their vision is profound. Different enough that I like that there are people exploring that space. There will likely always be room for their mental model even if it isn't my preferred one.
However, I wonder if Next isn't an easier target. Which seems absurd giving how literally every power in the ecosystem is dedicated in making Next succeed. But...Just rewatching this segment on Theo's stream(1:55:46): https://youtu.be/hSECorasSK8?t=6947
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