It’s not an insult, if you think for loops are commonplace in modern JavaScript and React isn’t the dominant frontend framework by far (twice more used than the next in line, vue), you’re out of touch, it’s just a statement.
How can you not realize that producing a string or a tree of elements is a purely functional operation? There’s no side effect here. Are you familiar with the concepts of functional programming?
You are being insulting because every time we disagree, you ignore half of what I am saying to assume I don’t know what I am talking about. Two informed people can disagree but you don’t seem to get that. A conversation is not a competition where one person gets to prove the other person is ignorant.
Take “React winning”. We disagree that React won because I don’t think 66% of a market is “won”. But you jumped to the conclusion that I just didn’t know what I was talking about. Then I clarified that the difference in our opinion is not the knowledge of the market share but our judgment of it, and I gave the example of Android not having “won” the smartphone market with ~72% of the market… and you just ignored that and doubled down on calling me out of touch.
Take the use of map(). I am very clearly distinguishing between common usage and defined semantics. The gap between the two was what I was complaining about. But you ignored what I was saying and decided that I don’t know map() is used a lot in modern JavaScript, when that was the core of my complaint!
And for functional programming techniques, we disagree in how we think about the operation. You see it as data processing, I see it as I/O. I very specifically pointed out that I/O is a side-effect. This is a mainstream viewpoint in functional programming. But you ignored what we actually disagree about and assumed it’s just because I don’t know anything about functional programming.
Your approach to disagreeing with me is to ignore half the things I say so that you can attack me for being clueless. You need to do better.
I still think you’re misunderstanding what React is optimizing for. When you say "React has to force you into making everything an expression", you’re describing its core philosophy, not a constraint. JSX is built around the idea that rendering is just data transformation. It's UI as a function of state. That’s why using map() is idiomatic here. You’re building trees, not iterating imperatively.
Also, it bears repeating that React isn’t just slightly dominant. 82% of JS developers have used it according to the 2024 State of JS survey, and for good reason. It shaped the modern frontend mindset in a way that Vue or Angular haven’t, despite their own merits. For instance, many frameworks came up with their own version of hooks. It's telling that most new frontend frameworks are aiming for the "better React" position.
I realize we just have different interpretations of what "winning" means in a fragmented ecosystem, but it’s worth acknowledging how much React has set the tone for modern web development. UI as a function of state (and using map() a lot...) is here to stay.
> And for functional programming techniques, we disagree in how we think about the operation. You see it as data processing, I see it as I/O. I very specifically pointed out that I/O is a side-effect. This is a mainstream viewpoint in functional programming. But you ignored what we actually disagree about and assumed it’s just because I don’t know anything about functional programming.
I think you're wrong here. The point at which the rendered template is actually stuffed into the DOM (and hence the screen) is I/O, sure. But the creating / rendering of the template is a pure function, which is what we are dealing with here.
How can you not realize that producing a string or a tree of elements is a purely functional operation? There’s no side effect here. Are you familiar with the concepts of functional programming?