Infinite loops and missing dependencies are/were issues with `componentDidUpdate`/`componentWillUpdate` and `componentDidMount` as well, though. On the plus side, you now have a linter which can both point out these errors and automatically fix them for you. I agree that the whole thing is a bit leaky and dumb though, but there's no way to fix that without introducing some sort of compilation/optimization step and afaik the React guys aren't really considering that at the moment.
>Weird, unexpected reference issues
Not sure I've run into this before. Do you have any examples?
>strange programming patterns, a team member having to write a terrifying novel
The first bit seems like personal preference or something, not sure what you're referring to as strange. The `useEffect` novel exists because a ton of people had built up their (incorrect) mental model of how React works with lifecycle methods and were making mistakes or running into unexpected behaviour because they assumed `useEffect` was the exact same thing as `componentDidMount`.
1) Needing an advanced understanding of closures. Not always, but sometimes. That "sometimes" is often unintuitive, requiring weird solutions like useRef. Good luck beginners.
2) Things like updating reducer state by using a spread object, which creates a new object which can then send a system haywire. Seems fine, and is mostly fine in most cases, but hey, oftentimes not fine, and why that's so is not always clear. So then there's memoization, and useCallback and all of these safety checks -- each with their own dependencies array that need to be checked. It's really too much tbh. There are lots of solutions out there that use proxies to check this stuff; React should have baked that into the core and completely removed that responsibility from the user unless they wanted to opt-in micromanage performance of their code.
This is what you should be doing and not doing this seems more likely to cause problems. Do you have an example?
A few iterations later and you have setState peppered throughout your component.
More often then not though I’ve seen a lot of class components that would just fail to update when certain props change. It’s much harder to miss these cases with hooks.