React Won by Default – and It's Killing Front End Innovation

Re:React Won by Default – and It's Killing Front End Innovation by actinium226 on Tuesday September 16, 2025 @10:07AM (#45262462)

You've given this example about how to use React without JSX but actually you're not using React but Preact, which is a different library. Preact, to its credit, actually has instructions for using it without JSX right in their getting started guide: https://preactjs.com/guide/v10/getting-started/#alternatives.... In fact it's the very first paragraph.

React itself buries this information in a reference (https://react.dev/reference/react/createElement#creating-an-...), and the reference doesn't even give a complete example because the example still uses JSX to render the root component.

And I'm not sure if Preact is really a viable alternative to React. If a library I want to use can't work via preact/compat, what then? Do stackoverflow solutions for React problems apply to Preact? I imagine at least some might not. Given these limitations, is there a reason someone would choose Preact over a framework that has its own ecosystem, like Vue for example?

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Re:React Won by Default – and It's Killing Front End Innovation by b_e_n_t_o_n on Tuesday September 16, 2025 @04:33PM (#45267599)

Preact is basically a clone of React, you could replace those imports with React and you'd have the same app.

Preact's compatibility layer is good but not perfect - some UI libraries rely on React's internal implementation which breaks with Preact. I think people can and should chose Preact for when they know what third party dependencies they will rely on, and for situations like this where it's a fairly trivial single page app.

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