You can mix-and-match. If you want to write an individual component as a class you can, and if you want to later convert it to using hooks there's nothing stopping you.

That's not the point.

The point is that most of the React literature available today will become obsolete.

How? It's still perfectly valid, usable, idiomatic React.

If you learned React with hooks the class notation won't make sense, and viceversa.

So they should have renamed the whole framework when they added a single a new feature so people know they need to learn it before reading the examples?

It's not a new feature it's a complete new methodology.

The point is that you don't have to use it. If you can't be bothered to learn a simple new feature then just keep doing it the old way; your code will still work. I don't even understand the complaint; are they never supposed to change anything? It's totally optional; even if most of the community goes down that direction you don't have to.

Beyond that, hooks are super simple and the complainers are just making a big deal out of nothing. They are just callback functions that you implement outside of a class instead of overloading arbitrary method identifiers like "componentDidUpdate".

You also don't have to use it.

That's quite hyperbolic. Functional components have existed in React for a long time, hooks are just adding existing concepts (state and lifecycle operations) to them.

We will have to agree to disagree. IMO the compositional paradigm of hooks is radically different than using classes for example.

This is what I don't get about hooks. Remembering Markbages great talk on 'Minimal API Surface Area'? How is having multiple ways of doing the same thing minimal API surface area?

React is losing sight of what made it great when it came out. Do one thing, do it well, and do it the simplest way possible.

That sort of absolutist logic will never allow a framework to progress and become better. Sometimes good ideas come around (IMO like hooks) that are worth increasing the API surface area for.

I for one loathe using class components now and not being able to share logic compositionally via hooks when I work with them. I feel more productive and I feel like my components are smaller and more focused, and I don’t repeat myself as much. It’s been a net win for me, and I think it’s well worth having two supported APIs that do roughly the same thing.. because despite this, React is still a small and focused library API-wise.

They've increase the surface to reduce it over time, if that makes sense. Hooks are much more natural, simplistic way to write stateful components.