This whole video is dumb as hell, making a static landing page is easy and common practice. And you cannot and would never replace a large react app with vanilla JS. That makes zero sense. Replicating that in vanilla JS would be 3-5x more code of imperative spaghetti and be slower. Maybe you would refactor it to a different JS framework.
To be honest the real culprit is the tech stack itself. I mean if javascript was sophisticated enough to do things natively and eliminate all these bundlers and preprocessors everything would be much much better, that's why technologies like HTMX is so appealing nowadays. We are at the point that setting app the frontend stack is much harder than the backend one, that's unheard of and honestly doesn't make sense...
@@HarshhasteerDepends on what you consider a benefit. Are we talking about number of stars on GitHub or are we talking about real world money. TBH if you value revenue, I don’t think anyone actually benefits from the rapid pace of replacement technology. I think the boring truth is that the less churn a tech stack has, the more it benefits the cost:revenue ratio.
@@PraiseYeezus Well the original implementation (concept at-least) has been around for a long time, they probably have the man power to implement in the same way that both the RSC has been used at both Facebook and Instagram for a while and how the New Architecture for React Native has been online at the same companies for a while as well.
To be fair, Netflix didn't stop using React. It just opted to use Vanilla JS for the landing pages, which makes sense because the real features of Netflix are needed after you've logged into the platform. So the narrative that Netflix is now using Vanilla JS is very misleading.
Granted, parts of the component ecosystem are a mess but React itself is a few kilobytes in size. I'm not saying it's perfect but your options are pretty rich if you need components to be fair.
I'm curious what you guys think of as bloat in React? What is so messy about it? Coming from someone who uses it every day but I am very open for hearing criticism, not like it's my religion.
lol, and you think vanilla JS isn't a mess? I guarantee that Netflix essentially built their own "framework" under the hood that you would probably make similar comments about, because it can be a pain to work with at scale with large/multiple teams. That's how frameworks usually come into existence in the forst place.
Thank you Stefan. Whenever I can I try to write everything in vanilla python, js or any language im using instead of over relying on external libraries. I would rather spend more time writing code from scratch but having solid control over the codebase, rather then have so many unnecessary over abstractions. Would love to see more companies move in this direction, rather then having to make the tradeoff for speed in accumulated technical debt long term.
I like it too, but I've seen some incredibly bad vanilla code that could have been handled by a framework. The finished software was so full of issues and impossible to maintain. I suppose the people who wrote it didn't know what they were doing. Frameworks can bloat your software, but be careful of reinventing the wheel, especially if it's a paying customer's stuff. Doing things with vanilla programming language is great for learning the nitty gritty stuff, though!
Sounds like you are just wasting time and making a worse product, then. Vanilla web development is a huge pain unless you have a really simple static site
That's awesome if you can afford the investment in re-inventing a slightly smaller wheel. But... - If you just wanna halve the loading time of your app with a one-liner (well, about 3 lines): Preact > React. Your mileage may vary, but was an instant win for me (also for performance and reduced memory footprint for embedded systems). - If you wanna spend ages rolling your own framework (depending how complex your app is - whilst also getting your entire team to agree about every little architectural decision already solved by each framework): Vanilla JS. - If you want 'no framework' but all the things: Web Components (best of luck). - If you want maximum speed and tiny download size, along with a complete rewrite in a new tech (until something even better comes out next week): HTMX :)
Netflix didn't eliminate React entirely. Instead, it uses React server-side to pre-render HTML, which is sent to the client for fast initial loading. On the client side, vanilla JavaScript handles interactive elements, allowing for quicker load times and fewer resources than would be needed with React
Honestly, just do what works for you. I've been temporarily working on frontend team past few months (im backend engineer) and im suprised how quick you can achieve things with react, and reusing components/hooks.
@@aiamfree I believe it can be expensive to make a new JS framework which is to be used for a web site/application such as Netflix. I would guess it from idea to a first testable full version may take at least 2000 hours. This includes planning, testing etc. Then comes the cost of having all employees in the development department learning the new framework, integration with backed, and further patching and so on. I.e. for Netflix to create and switch over to a new JS framework may take many, many hours = be expensive.
@@SunAndMoon-zc9vd that’s the cost of bureaucracy not the cost of an actual framework. JavaScript was created by one person…in something like 10 days, so the story goes.
@@aiamfree I thought this discussion was in context of Netflix? Time = money. Both because somebody needs to be paid to develop the new framework for Netflix, and also the cost of said person not being able to work on further developing the already existing product. Creating a JS framework for a company includes the bureaucracy. The first version of JavaScript was created in 10 days. The version we have now took 20+ years to reach.
Had to do this a lot for SEO purposes. Also, seriously, there are tiny tiny libraries that give 90% of the good stuff without all the complexity & crap. alpine js comes to mind.
I remember suggesting to not use React.js in my last job but I got forced and then got scolded for my code being "too slow" while being in development mode and before making any optimizations.
what a great vid. you even define the term frontend. if only more people didn't speak in tongues when teaching. i also appreciate the strategies you suggest for client-side performance and whatnot. this is a real tech video right here.
Is it possible that we will have no additional libs (like jquery, react) or frameworks (angular) at all ? Only clean JS will do everything what we need.
That's the reason I chose van.js course it's a smaller and more lightweight library compared to React. It has a smaller footprint and requires less boilerplate code to get started.
Yeah, you're right, the basic idea once was to shift some work to the client to take load off the server. That worked great until these garbage frameworks came into play. No matter which of them, to me it seems that they're pumping up a trivial problem (updating a bit UI on the client) into a giant mess of overengineered and way to complex shit and then claim "Ha! We have a solution to this!" 🤦🏼♂ It's actually fairly easy: Throw them out. Altogether. Use HTMX and a bit of JS and that's it.
I think the framing is wrong. They didn't move away from react completely. Instead they moved the computation to the server which reduced bundle size. Am i missing anything?
Knowing vanilla js is great since it’s the core of the web. But you have to also keep in mind what jobs on the market are looking for since you’ll be freelancing.
@@linonator Most freelancer will be working with small businesses. Creating a website for a small business using react is ridiculous and borderline fraudulent.
Do you think it is a good idea to start a SaaS selling courses like udemy, but only for language learning? What do you recommend on how to start, and also how to find teachers that want to sell their courses?
I like the news. I really don't like a bunch of frameworks and libraries doing almost the same thing one on top of the other and making the things more complex everyday... Instead, I prefer a good standard with the ability to improve over the time.
"Netflix's approach highlights that complex frameworks aren't always necessary..." Isn't their solution more complex now? They moved the complexity to the server but the system as a whole is more complex then before. There is nothing simple about react server components.
server computer are made big and powerful for what if they move most the computing responsibility to client? it is like restaurant giving you raw vegetables and meat and said "here cook it by yourself and give us money"
I have a giant old system I upgraded to angular, but I left the landing and login pages vanilla. Now I wish I'd just done the entire damn thing in vanilla.
Vanilla JS is almost always the way to go. The problem is that the web exploded faster than qualified people could be trained. Companies needed websites to cash in on the internet and there were not enough computer programmers and software engineers available. That created a sort of wild west situation which led to the hiring of uneducated unqualified people. The cheapest thing for the industry to do was have a few qualified smart people make frameworks and libraries so that the uneducated unqualified masses could produce some kind of result regardless of how poor it was. Now that the dust has settled and we have more educated qualified people it is incumbent that we stop hiring boot camp graduates and those without degrees and we start actually hiring qualified people that understand computer science and software engineering.
Netflix removed React 7 years ago and i try to make content out of it but I'm too broke to pay for a medium article. so i read the introduction and talk like i fully understand everything. Netflix only removed React on the landing page
The client Server-Client problem reminds of an interview with an Apple Exec. How much of the ""Apple Intelligence" service is going to be on the phone vs offloaded into the cloud?
JavaScript and web devs, soy boys need to constantly be told what to do. They are like absolute sheep. They have no thoughts or ideas of their own. And they wait for somebody, some influencer, some large company to tell them what they should be doing next. Now you will see a lot of Twitter and LinkedIn posts about why React is no longer as good.
I sometimes enter pages that are so bloated and slow that I just don't even bother... Poorly coded react is painfully slow, still I would use it for quick development, well done is decently fast. Probably thede devs are just crappy at react and then they are redrawing a lot.
wait, this 4 years old video just came on my feed, annnnnd it is from a 2017 blog post ? anyway, React is not always the way to go, I personally never liked it
I replaced react, vue, and svelte with alpinejs and i pretty much write vanilla js, while benefiting from its reactivity. Done with vite, npm, and other bullshit. Go and django for backend, doht need any fucking SPAs. Done, burnt out, fuck you js ...
u did not call it lol, this happened years ago and they only replaced it on one of their static pages where SEO and loading time was more crucial. they still actively use React to build out other parts of their platform, just check their frontend job listings
It makes total sense. Netflix doesn't have near the level of complexity in their interface to warrant the headaches of react. They'll probably (slowly) make their own (tiny) framework, focused on their needs. But only because Javascript needs to be managed and organized somehow.
Dude... No it's not. And it sucks for anything dynamic on the client. And it's written in react lol But your comment pretty much sums up my opinion of the next.js community reasoning skills
React is just a library that is a wrapper over vanilla js + it optimizes (through diffing) the DOM updates, which would be quite tricky if you had to update a lot of elements yourself in vanilla js. Next.js is a framework that works on top of React. I also prefer using Next.js, because it gives you consistent project structure, routing handling, ssr and much more.
Nope. They stopped using React in the LANDING page. News: They use React again. But the whole Netflix web app is using React, everything.
Yeah, he doesn't even says what part uses vanilla js
This whole video is dumb as hell, making a static landing page is easy and common practice. And you cannot and would never replace a large react app with vanilla JS. That makes zero sense. Replicating that in vanilla JS would be 3-5x more code of imperative spaghetti and be slower. Maybe you would refactor it to a different JS framework.
this old fart doesnt understand modern software lol
Haha..I wonder why he didn't explain nor say that
To be honest the real culprit is the tech stack itself. I mean if javascript was sophisticated enough to do things natively and eliminate all these bundlers and preprocessors everything would be much much better, that's why technologies like HTMX is so appealing nowadays. We are at the point that setting app the frontend stack is much harder than the backend one, that's unheard of and honestly doesn't make sense...
Who gets benefitted by these 'hyped technologies' ?
@@HarshhasteerDepends on what you consider a benefit. Are we talking about number of stars on GitHub or are we talking about real world money. TBH if you value revenue, I don’t think anyone actually benefits from the rapid pace of replacement technology. I think the boring truth is that the less churn a tech stack has, the more it benefits the cost:revenue ratio.
@@Harshhasteer I don't understand the question. All I'm saying front end has a lot of friction
This is so true. I'm helping to update a product that has more dependencies than features.
@@albertoarmando6711 lol
2017 React and 2024 React are two completely different ecosystems
Exactly, the pain points that they were trying to mitigate are completely solved by React Server Components and Server Actions etc.
@@I-AMSelf ironically the article seems to state that Netflix did their own implementation of RSC before it was being used everywhere
@@PraiseYeezus Well the original implementation (concept at-least) has been around for a long time, they probably have the man power to implement in the same way that both the RSC has been used at both Facebook and Instagram for a while and how the New Architecture for React Native has been online at the same companies for a while as well.
@@I-AMSelfyea, well, "server side rendering" is how they used to make websites back in the day iirc
Which is better and which one do you prefer?
To be fair, Netflix didn't stop using React. It just opted to use Vanilla JS for the landing pages, which makes sense because the real features of Netflix are needed after you've logged into the platform.
So the narrative that Netflix is now using Vanilla JS is very misleading.
As someone who thinks React is a silly, bloated, turgid mess I am happy to hear this news.
same
I already knew this years ago. To much bloatware
Granted, parts of the component ecosystem are a mess but React itself is a few kilobytes in size.
I'm not saying it's perfect but your options are pretty rich if you need components to be fair.
I'm curious what you guys think of as bloat in React? What is so messy about it? Coming from someone who uses it every day but I am very open for hearing criticism, not like it's my religion.
lol, and you think vanilla JS isn't a mess? I guarantee that Netflix essentially built their own "framework" under the hood that you would probably make similar comments about, because it can be a pain to work with at scale with large/multiple teams. That's how frameworks usually come into existence in the forst place.
Thanks for catching us up on 2017
Lol exactly what I came here to say
No problem 👍
Thank you Stefan. Whenever I can I try to write everything in vanilla python, js or any language im using instead of over relying on external libraries. I would rather spend more time writing code from scratch but having solid control over the codebase, rather then have so many unnecessary over abstractions. Would love to see more companies move in this direction, rather then having to make the tradeoff for speed in accumulated technical debt long term.
I like it too, but I've seen some incredibly bad vanilla code that could have been handled by a framework. The finished software was so full of issues and impossible to maintain. I suppose the people who wrote it didn't know what they were doing. Frameworks can bloat your software, but be careful of reinventing the wheel, especially if it's a paying customer's stuff. Doing things with vanilla programming language is great for learning the nitty gritty stuff, though!
Sounds like you are just wasting time and making a worse product, then.
Vanilla web development is a huge pain unless you have a really simple static site
So basically what SvelteKit does by design, amazing
really? never tried that FW :0
That's awesome if you can afford the investment in re-inventing a slightly smaller wheel. But...
- If you just wanna halve the loading time of your app with a one-liner (well, about 3 lines): Preact > React. Your mileage may vary, but was an instant win for me (also for performance and reduced memory footprint for embedded systems).
- If you wanna spend ages rolling your own framework (depending how complex your app is - whilst also getting your entire team to agree about every little architectural decision already solved by each framework): Vanilla JS.
- If you want 'no framework' but all the things: Web Components (best of luck).
- If you want maximum speed and tiny download size, along with a complete rewrite in a new tech (until something even better comes out next week): HTMX :)
Netflix didn't eliminate React entirely. Instead, it uses React server-side to pre-render HTML, which is sent to the client for fast initial loading. On the client side, vanilla JavaScript handles interactive elements, allowing for quicker load times and fewer resources than would be needed with React
Honestly, just do what works for you. I've been temporarily working on frontend team past few months (im backend engineer) and im suprised how quick you can achieve things with react, and reusing components/hooks.
That's crazy how the entire community is freaking out over something that happened back in 2017
And next month it will be Svelte. And then Solid and then they will make their own. Because they can afford it.
It's not expensive to make your own JS framework.
@@aiamfree I believe it can be expensive to make a new JS framework which is to be used for a web site/application such as Netflix. I would guess it from idea to a first testable full version may take at least 2000 hours. This includes planning, testing etc. Then comes the cost of having all employees in the development department learning the new framework, integration with backed, and further patching and so on. I.e. for Netflix to create and switch over to a new JS framework may take many, many hours = be expensive.
@@SunAndMoon-zc9vd that’s the cost of bureaucracy not the cost of an actual framework. JavaScript was created by one person…in something like 10 days, so the story goes.
@@aiamfree I thought this discussion was in context of Netflix? Time = money. Both because somebody needs to be paid to develop the new framework for Netflix, and also the cost of said person not being able to work on further developing the already existing product. Creating a JS framework for a company includes the bureaucracy.
The first version of JavaScript was created in 10 days. The version we have now took 20+ years to reach.
You describe what Qwik framework is... resumability, automatic optimizations, only load JS when need, only excecute the JS when really matter.
A breaking news story reported 7 years late. Nice. Thanks.
I used the story to a few concepts.
Thanks for spreading the helping hand...❤ Nice topic...
Had to do this a lot for SEO purposes. Also, seriously, there are tiny tiny libraries that give 90% of the good stuff without all the complexity & crap. alpine js comes to mind.
I agree, my whole tech stack for UI is just Alpine + HTMX + Tailwind
I remember suggesting to not use React.js in my last job but I got forced and then got scolded for my code being "too slow" while being in development mode and before making any optimizations.
what a great vid. you even define the term frontend. if only more people didn't speak in tongues when teaching. i also appreciate the strategies you suggest for client-side performance and whatnot. this is a real tech video right here.
Makes sense. The landing page probably didn't need React or any framework.
Great news !!! thanks !
The fact alone that this now somehow is big news shows the absurdity of the current web's overall architecture
Sir do you think it’s still worth building apps with Nextjs?
Next in breaking news, Merrill Lynch stopped using cobol in 1986
😂
… man, I hadn’t heard, I’ll need to do a breaking news video on it!
@@StefanMischook😂
Here’s is the fact: Citi, BOA Merrill Lynch, AIG all using COBOL in 2024
@@train_xcyeah my dude, it was a joke …
Is it possible that we will have no additional libs (like jquery, react) or frameworks (angular) at all ? Only clean JS will do everything what we need.
That's the reason I chose van.js course it's a smaller and more lightweight library compared to React. It has a smaller footprint and requires less boilerplate code to get started.
Yeah, you're right, the basic idea once was to shift some work to the client to take load off the server. That worked great until these garbage frameworks came into play. No matter which of them, to me it seems that they're pumping up a trivial problem (updating a bit UI on the client) into a giant mess of overengineered and way to complex shit and then claim "Ha! We have a solution to this!" 🤦🏼♂ It's actually fairly easy: Throw them out. Altogether. Use HTMX and a bit of JS and that's it.
Hey Stef, how did you maintain consistency all the way? I'm struggling with consistency. Do you have any suggestions?
You might not need that library - Maximiliano Firtman
I think the framing is wrong. They didn't move away from react completely. Instead they moved the computation to the server which reduced bundle size. Am i missing anything?
That's what he said
as a beginner who wants to work as a freelancer is it better to stick with vanilla js.
Knowing vanilla js is great since it’s the core of the web. But you have to also keep in mind what jobs on the market are looking for since you’ll be freelancing.
For freelance ... vanilla is the way to go 100%.
@@StefanMischook What are you on Uncle Stef?
@@linonator Most freelancer will be working with small businesses. Creating a website for a small business using react is ridiculous and borderline fraudulent.
@@Dgmstudios40 😂😂 agreed
2017 ? Hows current stack and % of use of the techs looks right now ? 7+ years is too much time...
You make very insightful videos
they can improve the load speed of the website all they want but the core problem(s) at Netflix is/are elsewhere.
Do you think it is a good idea to start a SaaS selling courses like udemy, but only for language learning? What do you recommend on how to start, and also how to find teachers that want to sell their courses?
Selling courses is like cucking your mom for free. Knowledge must be free.
I like the news. I really don't like a bunch of frameworks and libraries doing almost the same thing one on top of the other and making the things more complex everyday... Instead, I prefer a good standard with the ability to improve over the time.
You don't have the whole context. They only did it for the landing page. The whole app is React then and still.
"Netflix's approach highlights that complex frameworks aren't always necessary..." Isn't their solution more complex now? They moved the complexity to the server but the system as a whole is more complex then before. There is nothing simple about react server components.
server computer are made big and powerful for what if they move most the computing responsibility to client?
it is like restaurant giving you raw vegetables and meat and said "here cook it by yourself and give us money"
I have a giant old system I upgraded to angular, but I left the landing and login pages vanilla. Now I wish I'd just done the entire damn thing in vanilla.
Vanilla JS is almost always the way to go. The problem is that the web exploded faster than qualified people could be trained. Companies needed websites to cash in on the internet and there were not enough computer programmers and software engineers available. That created a sort of wild west situation which led to the hiring of uneducated unqualified people. The cheapest thing for the industry to do was have a few qualified smart people make frameworks and libraries so that the uneducated unqualified masses could produce some kind of result regardless of how poor it was. Now that the dust has settled and we have more educated qualified people it is incumbent that we stop hiring boot camp graduates and those without degrees and we start actually hiring qualified people that understand computer science and software engineering.
What I think would work better is actually teaching JS in schools. Because it is a whole different way of thinking than C++ or Java.
Landing page.. that's not completely removed thou which you are implying :/
I mean... If you scale large enough like netflix makes sense but for medium companies that wont grow ever react is ok
Netflix removed React 7 years ago and i try to make content out of it but I'm too broke to pay for a medium article. so i read the introduction and talk like i fully understand everything. Netflix only removed React on the landing page
Yep .. I spend all my cash on hair care products.
React and other syndicates are good only for todo apps. Vanilla JS is always the king. Die react and Hail HTMX and FAST-HTML
What do you think of HTMX?
So, they removed react from the landing page. That’s it?
Yep. The lesson of the video is beyond react.
The client Server-Client problem reminds of an interview with an Apple Exec. How much of the ""Apple Intelligence" service is going to be on the phone vs offloaded into the cloud?
Bruh it's just the landing page, might as well not use javascript at all. That doesn't mean anything in the de-framework movement.
The actual web app would be a nightmare to migrate to vanillajs..i think this is just for the non functional parts
Thank you.
You're welcome.
The VanillaJS framework is superior in many ways, especially considering what a light-weight download it is.
Not as fast the 'machine code' framework ;)
@@LiamODev This is indeed the fastest, but it's surprisingly bulky to download, and the code base is not exactly intuitive.
netflix was never that complet to need something like react tbh
JavaScript and web devs, soy boys need to constantly be told what to do. They are like absolute sheep. They have no thoughts or ideas of their own. And they wait for somebody, some influencer, some large company to tell them what they should be doing next. Now you will see a lot of Twitter and LinkedIn posts about why React is no longer as good.
Hbo/max is lightyears behind netflix.
Good shows though
What about Vue?
The sooner we can phase out JavaScript, the better
I sometimes enter pages that are so bloated and slow that I just don't even bother... Poorly coded react is painfully slow, still I would use it for quick development, well done is decently fast. Probably thede devs are just crappy at react and then they are redrawing a lot.
This is just React via SSR
You never talk about the benefits of a corporate job. Like insurance and 401k.
My mind refused to grasp react since i didn't find it convincing enough. I love my vanilla JavaScript
Vanilla js. Ahh feels good
I feel that the title of the video is a bit misleading.
I'm learning programming and I've avoiding JS because of the frameworks.
Am I the only one?
Click-bait: Netflix replaced React with Vanilla JS only on the landing page in 2017. The rest of the site is still in React.
Watch the video and you’ll see there is much more to it than React or Netflix.
He said in 2017?!
thank gawd
Can we build a different covid in react?
React is overkill and just a UI library. Just use native web components
wait, this 4 years old video just came on my feed, annnnnd it is from a 2017 blog post ? anyway, React is not always the way to go, I personally never liked it
U DA MAN!
I replaced react, vue, and svelte with alpinejs and i pretty much write vanilla js, while benefiting from its reactivity. Done with vite, npm, and other bullshit. Go and django for backend, doht need any fucking SPAs. Done, burnt out, fuck you js ...
oohh no, not React. This kills the bootcamper
The world is healing, finally.
You would probably like to know that Microsoft Edge is also switching from React to using web components.
I hadn't heard that. Thanks!
LOL
yeah, i mean even this is a mcguyver solution. .js is objectively bad at its job....
Remove it from the back end too. React sucks everywhere. Or maybe it's just the modern front end developers that don't know what they are doing.
Is HTMX the future?
nope! its something everyone talks about and no one using it on production
I don't think so. Not much adoption.
@@statuschannel8572 I do, just coding another piece with it.
lets do jquery
Good to see that. Next tailwind ugly html
Why this is trend now?
Could just use svelte. I mean, it compiles down to vanilla JS. No Shadow Dom
This is 2018 news...
Cut your hair.. it's very distracting..Great video uncle by the way, many thanks!
thanks unc
Welcome!
FE is so bad.
I called it right...I gave up trying to master React because I started late and had a feeling it would phase out soon. Now we are seeing it happen.
It’s not phasing out anytime soon.
u did not call it lol, this happened years ago and they only replaced it on one of their static pages where SEO and loading time was more crucial.
they still actively use React to build out other parts of their platform, just check their frontend job listings
good to know almost 47% of the web still using react
Merrige counselor 😂
I like that ooo react😂😂
BASED
click farming title
It makes total sense. Netflix doesn't have near the level of complexity in their interface to warrant the headaches of react.
They'll probably (slowly) make their own (tiny) framework, focused on their needs. But only because Javascript needs to be managed and organized somehow.
React sucks, shame it’s the default framework.
Handlebars!!! Lol jk
Next.js is so much better than React
Next is build on React!
Dude... No it's not. And it sucks for anything dynamic on the client. And it's written in react lol
But your comment pretty much sums up my opinion of the next.js community reasoning skills
React is just a library that is a wrapper over vanilla js + it optimizes (through diffing) the DOM updates, which would be quite tricky if you had to update a lot of elements yourself in vanilla js. Next.js is a framework that works on top of React. I also prefer using Next.js, because it gives you consistent project structure, routing handling, ssr and much more.
@@statuschannel8572 Yeah i know, that was the joke 😂
@@everythingisfine9988 I know, that was the joke 😂
It is will be fast but the security will be shit, beside the code will be more complicated .
Any evidence (or just reasoning) for any of that?
React sucks