These are my opinions and are ruminations on what might be happening as more and more developers use LLMs and Frameworks to build on the web.
In October last year I wrote “will developers care about frameworks in the future?” predicting that LLMs would abstract away framework choice. I was wrong—or at least, wrong about the timeline.
The reality is more interesting and more permanent: React isn’t competing with other frameworks anymore. React has become the platform. And if you’re building a new framework, library or browser feature today, you need to understand that you’re not just competing with React—you’re competing against a self-reinforcing feedback loop between LLM training data, system prompts, and developer output that makes displacing React functionally impossible.
One of the reason I hated JS ecosystem is because how quickly it has been changing. You mastered one way of creating website called X and 3 years later cool kids are already using completely different stack of tools. Constant re-learning of how to do the same thing you’ve been always doing.
Is it bad that we finally settle on one framework? Can we finally recognise web as mature platform and focus on creating useful stuff instead of reinventing a wheel?
These are all very good points, and there is in value of having a common framework for front-end development. However, I would argue React isn’t always the right tool for the job, yet it has become the dominant framework, and that dominance is being further bolstered because of generative AI.
This isn’t about React being the best tool or that it’s Model is good for LLMs (I don’t see any evidence there at all). It’s about React being past the point where network effects make alternatives viable.
So even if a better framework came along, and ideally one that’s not owned by Meta, it would be very difficult for it to take hold because of this.
One of the reason I hated JS ecosystem is because how quickly it has been changing. You mastered one way of creating website called X and 3 years later cool kids are already using completely different stack of tools. Constant re-learning of how to do the same thing you’ve been always doing.
Is it bad that we finally settle on one framework? Can we finally recognise web as mature platform and focus on creating useful stuff instead of reinventing a wheel?
These are all very good points, and there is in value of having a common framework for front-end development. However, I would argue React isn’t always the right tool for the job, yet it has become the dominant framework, and that dominance is being further bolstered because of generative AI.
So even if a better framework came along, and ideally one that’s not owned by Meta, it would be very difficult for it to take hold because of this.