A sustainable web career, for when all this blows over
23 points by nrvous
23 points by nrvous
Would agree that learning React in this day and age is throwing away time that would be better used elsewhere. However, if you already know React there's likely to be contract work out there for you forevermore; I got started in PHP contracting in Ages Past when that was everywhere, and I still come across the occasional posting that needs someone who knows the old magic.
In that sense, React/JSX is likely to join PHP and Cobol in the list of "tech that'll pay you enough to come out of retirement for 3 months".
Agreed.
Some of the highest paid word I did was on keeping a VB6 project limping along. There will be loads and loads of React to maintain in the next 30 years. Big projects may very well transition to something more sensible, but the React based inventory system at your local used car lot that somehow became an integral part of the business will eventually break and someone will need to come in and make sure it can be running on Monday.
Would agree that learning React in this day and age is throwing away time that would be better used elsewhere.
I'm feeling so out of touch right now. What do people use for frontend these days then?
At my workplace React is and was the go-to even before the AI stuff became a thing. It's very much not a legacy tech around here yet.
What do people use for frontend these days then?
React. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology. There's a narrative that web technologies turn over ever two days, but React is 13 years old. It is boring technology. I am not going to argue whether it is good or bad. I'm not even going to argue it's good for your career, I don't know the front-end market well enough to say which positions pay best.
What I will stamp my foot and insist upon is that it is at worst, just slightly more dead than Python and Java. The amount of articles a tool gets on link aggregators is so badly correlated to its actual popularity.
There's a narrative that web technologies turn over ever two days, but React is 13 years old.
React was the framework that broke that cycle.
Several years before React entered the scene, I remember complaining to a frontend dev about all the turnover: it seemed like just yesterday everyone was talking about Backbone.js, but now AngularJS is the hot new thing, and now Angular is becoming something else…? I'm not sure I could do that. And he basically replied that yeah, frontend isn't for the faint of heart.
A few years later, I was chatting with another frontend dev, and the answer had changed quite a bit. React won. Give it a try! Frontend development is actually good now.
(To be fair, React has been constantly evolving since then, so it's never been a learn-it-once deal. But at least there's some continuity now.)
I'm going all win with vanillaJS/Web Components for my personal projects. It is freeing to work without tens (hundreds?) of npm packages.
I'm not a web dev, and am relying heavily on claude for my current webapp, but I did a bunch of research and picked a stack myself, and then told claude to use it. I would highly recommend doing the same - you can even ask the bots to help with the research, but make the call yourself based on what you feel will lead to a well structured and maintainable app.
(for my use case I ended up with server side rendering via django and datastar + tabulator.js for the few bits of frontend interactivity, but that will vary per project. svelte is well worth a look too.)
Reject fascism and don’t learn React for a sustainable web career for when “all this blows over?” I’m (genuinely) so jealous of the amount and quality of delusion in this post, and wish anyone following this mindset the best of luck. I hope I’m wrong.
It's a real grab-bag of topics for sure. If I squint I'd distill it down:
Build durable skills, develop good taste, work with users, have a good professional identity.
None of the tech opines in the piece land that that sentiment though.
Admirable delusion, but delusion nonetheless. To quote Steve Jobs, "those jobs aren't coming back."
Go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all of this to blow over.
Great plan. Can't see it going wrong at all.