shadcn/ui is such a terrible thing for the frontend ecosystem, and it'll get even worse for it as AI gets better.
Instead of learnable, stable, APIs for common components with well established versioning and well defined tokens, we've got people literally copying and pasting components and applying diffs so they can claim they "own them".
Except the vast majority of them don't ever change a line and just end up with a strictly worse version of a normal package (typically out of date or a hodgepodge of "versions" because they don't want to figure out diffs), and the few that do make changes don't have anywhere near the design sense to be using shadcn since there aren't enough tokens to keep the look and feel consistent across components.
The would be 1% who would change it and have their own well thought out design systems don't get a lift from shadcn either vs just starting with Radix directly.
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Amazing spin job though with the "registry" idea too: "it's actually very good for AI that we invented a parallel distribution system for ad-hoc components with no standard except a loose convention around sticking stuff in a folder called ui"
Instead of learnable, stable, APIs for common components with well established versioning and well defined tokens, we've got people literally copying and pasting components and applying diffs so they can claim they "own them".
Except the vast majority of them don't ever change a line and just end up with a strictly worse version of a normal package (typically out of date or a hodgepodge of "versions" because they don't want to figure out diffs), and the few that do make changes don't have anywhere near the design sense to be using shadcn since there aren't enough tokens to keep the look and feel consistent across components.
The would be 1% who would change it and have their own well thought out design systems don't get a lift from shadcn either vs just starting with Radix directly.
-
Amazing spin job though with the "registry" idea too: "it's actually very good for AI that we invented a parallel distribution system for ad-hoc components with no standard except a loose convention around sticking stuff in a folder called ui"