Why I Don't Use React Router

Why I Don't Use React Router(jkk.github.io)

122 points by jkkramer 9 years ago | 75 comments

Justin I think you are conflating a couple issues here:

  1). OSS critiques should be more polite

  2). People are stupid for not doing due diligence

First, I agree criticism should be constructive. Yet there is nothing wrong with 100 people saying here they don't like React Router and in fact such feedback is crucial for the authors and the community. Maybe you agree; but ironically the tone of your post seemed have a bit of the scorn and derision that you are asking people to avoid.

Secondly, it's already obvious people are responsible for their own projects. The motivation for stating the obvious seems to be to emphasize people should seek to blame themselves before criticizing others. Wrong. These things are orthogonal - Regardless of one's due diligence, it's perfectly acceptable, indeed beneficial, to critique OSS, when done in a productive way.

jkkramer 9 years ago | |

Yeah maybe. To me it feels like many in the community complain and shirk responsibility, and some stern words were needed to counterbalance that position. If the community wants stability in its projects, it needs to learn what it takes to achieve that.

jkkramer 9 years ago | | |

Further thoughts: choosing an unstable library and then criticizing it for being unstable seems silly. There are two sides: library authors need to value things like careful design, real world testing, and backwards compatibility. Library consumers need to advocate for the same things, plus learn how to identify risk (semver isn't going to save you), and take ownership of their choices.

tptee 9 years ago |

If you're looking to jump ship and your projects use Redux, you might find https://github.com/FormidableLabs/redux-little-router to be a nice alternative. RRv4 still hoards URL state within a component, while Little Router just puts it in the store. This makes deriving most of your app from URL state a reality.

Check out https://formidable.com/blog/2016/07/11/let-the-url-do-the-ta... for more on how we differentiate from the RR philosophy.

rkwz 9 years ago | |

There's also Navigo, a minimal router - https://github.com/krasimir/navigo

brian-armstrong 9 years ago |

It's great to someone express this point. Though it's hard to beat the convenience of dropping someone else's library into your codebase, each new dependency adds more security surface area and bloat to your application. I wish people considered this balance more carefully.

In general I think a littlw NIH is a good thing. Even if there exists a library that does what you want, it might also include much more that you don't need, and perhaps the kernel of what you want fits into a small function you can write and vet yourself.

bcherny 9 years ago | |

An idea of open source is that it's very likely that your own implementation is buggier, slower, and more poorly specified than the existing state of the art open source implementation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

hinkley 9 years ago | | |

Even if your code is better than the OSS alternative now, are you going to be able to maintain it at that level, given all of your other responsibilities?

I'm dealing with a bunch of people now who did something like that. At the time they made these decisions they might have had good reasons, but now they're doing other stuff and the custom things they wrote are a huge liability.

Don't write it unless you intend to own it.

brian-armstrong 9 years ago | | |

Not all open source is the same. The language you use might come with an open source standard library which is likely very high quality. On the other hand, piping in a few dozen packages from github or npm does not come with the same sort of quality, and here the "crowd" could actually just be a single developer

slavik81 9 years ago | | |

It's much easier to implement something for your application than something for a library. You have a specific problem in a specific context, but the open source library must solve a general problem in thousands of contexts.

jkkramer 9 years ago | | |

As programmers, we suffer from various maladies. NIH is one, laziness and shiny-chasing are others. As in life, balance is needed. Don't forget the cost part of cost/benefit analysis.

leepowers 9 years ago | | |

This is very true for a wide range of applications and projects and is definitely required in many contexts (for instance - don't roll your own crypto). But for simpler components, such as a router, it may preferable to write a small focused class instead of creating a new dependency.

douchescript 9 years ago | | |

Yes, but if my version only has the features I need. Then it's lighter and most probably faster. Since OS tends to support a smorgasbord of usecases it's more often than not bloated and unnecessarily complex when used.

SwellJoe 9 years ago | |

NIH is also kinda what leads to the proliferation of so many very similar, but slightly different, modules in npm. everybody thinks they can solve X problem better than the previous dozen people who solved it. Maybe it's driven by ego, maybe a sincere belief that their new way is better enough to justify a whole new project (and the division of talent available for solving that problem), etc.

There used to be a feeling in OSS that forking was a solution of last resort. Now, with the process of writing software becoming much more focused on micro-libraries (and the tools for using those micro-libs getting better enough to make it not so painful), the barrier to entry on writing a new library to solve a specific problem is often very low. Routing is not a huge problem. A single developer with some experience can build a reasonably complete one in a week. So...here we are. There's, what, a dozen popular routers? All mostly the same. Maybe one or two use promises, and maybe that seems much more modern, so they get some uptake. But, with one developer behind them, and maybe a couple of occasional other contributors, you have little feedback pushing for stability. The same desire that led to wanting to write a new router (to use the latest technology and ideas) is the same desire that leads to breaking changes.

I'm feeling particularly overwhelmed by the size and...um...inconsistency in quality, of the npm ecosystem. I really have very little of the NIH drive. I'm perfectly happy to put together Lego projects from off-the-shelf components, when possible (my business partner brings enough NIH to the table for both of us). But, I barely know where to start in node. NIH seems to have been elevated to a religion.

brian-armstrong 9 years ago | | |

There's a big difference between acting on NIH for your own project, and acting on it and then publishing it. It takes a considerable amount of work to prepare code for general use. On the other hand, if it's used in a specific way within one codebase, that may actually make much more sense than reaching for a library that is designed to do that one thing and a dozen others.

SwellJoe 9 years ago |

I recently started working seriously with node.js (I've tinkered over the years since it was launched, and we provide some support for it in our products, but never actually built anything with it). I went looking for a library to deal with logins, authentication, password resets, etc. Normal stuff that most web frameworks have some solutions for.

I found a package on npm that sounded like it did everything I wanted (plus a few extra things, but I figured I could ignore those). It took longer than I expected to install...so, I did a little digging. It had installed over 53,000 files, and the resulting directory was 110 MB in size!

I was absolutely flabbergasted. I couldn't believe installing one package, for something seemingly simple, could balloon up that large. I won't name names, as I did a little more poking around, and realized that most npm installations pull in thousands of files via automatic dependency resolution, though this one was a particularly egregious example. I've gotten to where I only install stuff via npm when I'm on a free connection; I normally work on mobile broadband, which is very expensive (and adds up to almost $300/month even before I started playing with npm).

Now, to be fair, it was pulling in a web framework...maybe Express or Hapi, I don't remember which, and all of its dependencies, so it was actually a lot more than just the login module. The kind of annoying bit was I already had a global installation of both of those frameworks from following tutorials, but it still seemed to insist on pulling in its own preferred versions of stuff, and putting them into the project directory.

I come from the Perl world, where if you don't spend at least half your time looking for and evaluating libraries before you start writing code, you're not being very productive. I'm, frankly, overwhelmed by how big and unfiltered the npm ecosystem is. I've found myself relieved to start tinkering with more "all in one" libraries and frameworks, because I don't have the time or knowledge to evaluate libs on my own. I ordinarily prefer a more a la carte approach, where you just pull in what you need, and so big libraries and frameworks don't fit that. But, I can't make sense out of the ecosystem without some guidance. There are over 70,000 npm packages! Curation really has turned out to be one of the big problems in computer science.

ianamartin 9 years ago |

I really need to get my blog up and running so that I can write about things like this.

My view is that dependencies are someone else's solution to my problem of technical debt.

I'd be a straight-up liar if I claimed to be proud of every line of code I've written, either for an employer or for myself. Sometimes you just have to hammer a square peg into a round hole and be done with it because deadlines. Or lazy. Or boredom. Or whatever this project is going nowhere anyway, so wtf? Hack the shit out of it.

I always tell myself I'm going to get back to that later and clean it up, but I often don't because, well, moar deadlines.

Dependency updates--particularly breaking ones--are things I love to hear about. Dependency updates give me an excuse, both professionally and for my side projects, to revisit stuff that I knew was janky and crappy and broke when I wrote it, but have since come to accept.

Security updates are absolute gold in this game of not wanting to suck but still having to meet deadlines.

"Sorry boss, but there's a vulnerability in lib x. We have to update. But it's breaking. So now we have to refactor. Two weeks, at least. Maybe more."

I just got rid of a crap-ton of bad code while I was updating for that dependency. Oops.

n0us 9 years ago |

As the person who wrote the top comment in the thread that you link to, I will admit: You are right for the most part. The choice to use an unproven library is my fault as it was my choice and it is also my responsibility to deal with the consequences and costs of the instability. This is why I will be removing React Router from my project as soon as I can find a stable and suitable replacement.

Recognizing the responsibility for your own actions does not preclude you from being frustrated and at times outright angry at the outcomes of those actions. In this case I (wrongly) assumed that after a 1.0 release the library would be relatively stable and have been repeatedly duped into believing that this time the major version release would be the stable one. I don't really see anywhere that people were issuing an outcry for V4, so I am still confused as to why it was so urgent to release it. It wasn't perfect but it was fine. Unfortunately in my frustration and confusion I chose to write a very strongly worded comment that apparently some people did not like.

> To be clear: developers that release libraries and then iterate the API in public do not deserve personal scorn for doing so

I have never gotten the impression that react-router was someone's personal library, rather it is a community project that is maintained by notable members of the javascript community and it is my belief that delivering half-baked stuff to the people who counted on them, and who they led to believe could count on them, is not a fair thing to do. I don't believe it is unreasonable to be frustrated with fickle leadership from people who stepped up to lead the project. If they can't deal with the criticism or don't have the time/effort/inclination/whatever to lead in a way that is agreeable to most of the community then perhaps someone else could lead. When projects have thousands of stars on github, making rapid successions of breaking changes throws all of those people for a loop.

If you do in fact view the repo as your personal project and want to make huge changes all the time, like every 6 months, I don't think that the version with thousands of stars is really the place to do that. Why not just do it on your own where it isn't going to affect so many people.

Note: Neither this, nor my original comment should be taken as personal attacks on the maintainers although I am aware that both are probably over stated. I'm sure they are all extremely talented developers and kind people.

jkkramer 9 years ago | |

Thanks for the thoughtful reply! I don't have a problem with strong opinions and harsh words when warranted, with the understanding that we're all learning.

What I wrote wasn't entirely in response to the HN thread. Similar thoughts about the JS community have been brewing for a while and the discussion prompted me to speak my mind.

jhgg 9 years ago |

We use React Router on our project. Looks like 4.0 does break pretty much everything.

My thoughts on the upgrade are pretty much:

- Do we actually need to upgrade? Old react router works fine.

- If we do need to upgrade - how long will it take? If it's just a few hours to shift some code around, maybe it's not that bad. Especially if it's moving to a cleaner more "react" API.

At the end of the day, we could write our own routing class, or another. We'll probably stick with react-router though - but save the upgrade for a day where we've got nothing else to do, or if an engineer has some free time.

cle 9 years ago | |

> but save the upgrade for a day where we've got nothing else to do, or if an engineer has some free time.

Or when you stumble on a show-stopping bug right before a deadline, that is only fixed in supported newer versions.

pavel_lishin 9 years ago | | |

Is that more or less likely with an older version of something like React Router, or a fairly new release?

cgdub 9 years ago | | |

This can happen with any release of any open source project. The only surefire way of dealing with it is diving into the source and fixing it yourself.

lstamour 9 years ago |

I'm reminded of https://medium.freecodecamp.com/you-might-not-need-react-rou... which discusses how to write your own such functionality from scratch. I often find that before adopting third party code you really have to consider it and perhaps even leave it out and feel the pain before accepting that it's necessary and adopting it. And even once you do, you should be open to maintaining or replacing it. There's a cost to roll-your-own though, you might need to write additional documentation. For routing though, it's usually one function and easy enough to grok on its own.

linkmotif 9 years ago |

Don't get it. It's FOSS. npm install the version you want. A new version released you don't like? Keep using the old version. Don't like the old version? Write your own. Fork it. It's free and awesome global collaboration!

diggan 9 years ago |

I might be missing something (after reading the article twice) but the author says nothing about why he doesn't use React Router...

The only mention I can find is "But the API smelled funny to me, and had not settled, so I continued to wait" that hints that the API is changing and looks weird. But other than that, there is no constructive criticism here.

I'm all for being able to write freely about software we find bad, but without any concrete examples or even pointers to what is bad, I don't think this article have any merit (except that it's good to make sure you understand the dependencies you have).

jkkramer 9 years ago | |

It looked like a risky dependency, simple as that. Despite the HN title, the point of the article was not to talk about React Router.

EDIT: Additionally, I'm not saying React Router is bad per se, just that it's not fully baked. I'm glad to see people working on the problem. I look forward to leveraging the fruits of their labor in the future (in fact, I already do - I use the history library on which RR is built).

diggan 9 years ago | | |

I still feel that you're not giving reasons of why it's a risky dependency or fully baked. And probably we/you should rename the title if it doesn't convey the article body...

Not that I am defending or even using React Router myself, I'm just saying that it's usually better for everyone if the feedback is better explained than just "It's bad" or "It's risky to use".

jameslk 9 years ago |

If anyone is wondering what leads to a Not Invented Here mindset, this probably would be a good example of it. Sure, it's not the fault of the open source library author that you depended on their work. However, when OSS fails to deliver or we criticize others for counting on it, we only discourage the dependability of OSS and push others away from the community. If we care about the continued adoption and growth of OSS then we'll need to have higher standards as well.

cle 9 years ago |

This is a very important dimension to consider when making technical decisions. I've never been able to find an easy way to assess this risk, beyond hearsay and word-of-mouth.

Is anyone aware of an easier way to assess these longer-term risks of a piece of technology? Things like API stability, community strength and responsiveness, backwards compatibility, upgrade paths, etc.

biocomputation 9 years ago | |

A large margin of safety / margin for error / margin for refactoring is the correct way to deal with uncertainty of any kind.

Humans are very poor at reasoning about low probability events that have serious consequences, i.e. large earthquakes with very long return periods.

For this reason, it's difficult to assess the 'risk' of external code because risk management processes don't work very well when high uncertainty is involved.

If you decide to use external code that has a high degree of uncertainty, just make sure to have a generous allowance of time/money/effort for future problems.

jkkramer 9 years ago | |

It's hard. 1) Gain experience. 2) Talk to tech veterans and journeymen. 3) Look to other communities for lessons.

wesleytodd 9 years ago |

Yep, this is a thing I push with my team all the time. Always vet your deps. In the long run is is WAY worth it. In the short run the cost is rather minimal unless you have devs that cannot actually deliver on the needs the dependency covers.

dustingetz 9 years ago | |

> unless you have devs that cannot actually deliver on the needs the dependency covers.

You say this off-handedly like its not a big deal. No single person or company understands all the dependencies from the app all the way down to the electricity. That's the real reason we use dependencies - for things that aren't core to our business, that we don't want to have to understand.

wesleytodd 9 years ago | | |

I guess I just assumed everyone understands that no team will have the ability to cover all your needs. So you actually need to judge when your team cant deliver, then pick the dependency to pull in.

dustingetz 9 years ago |

I just wanted to say that the clojure ecosystem is littered with the carcases of half baked libraries. Including some of my own. Its not a JS problem, its the beauty of open source & low friction sharing.

jkkramer 9 years ago | |

You're not wrong. But it feels worse in JS. In both cases lib authors would do well to set proper expectations - if your lib is half baked, be up front about it.

TheAceOfHearts 9 years ago |

I generally agree. I've been using RR for a while, and I'm not the biggest fan of their APIs. Nothing wrong with it, it just doesn't do what I want it to do; or rather... It does too much stuff, most of which I don't use. Just my opinion.

With that being said, they claim you'll be able to migrate slowly to v4, so hopefully it's not so bad. If they just broke backwards compatibility without a migration strategy, I'd certainly feel much more frustrated. I went with RR largely because it's widely used. I also don't think it's an unreasonable expectation for a widely used library to provide a migration strategy. Not that they're under any obligation to do so, of course.

My personal bar for adding dependencies is asking myself: would I feel comfortable debugging and fixing this? I recognize that it's not a free ride.

snippet22 9 years ago |

That's why they call it angular 2. It's finally out and ready to be used. Works really well with routers. Although you don't get the constant updating but you do get codeless directives that are really easy to understand.

oceanswave 9 years ago |

Every ecosystem is full of "half-baked" libraries. JS has more as the ecosystem is bigger and the barrier to entry is very low. It's the nature of open source, it's also the nature of open source to evaluate dependencies.

$ ls node_modules/**/lodash.js node_modules/cordova-lib/node_modules/lodash/chain/lodash.js node_modules/findup-sync/node_modules/lodash/dist/lodash.js node_modules/findup-sync/node_modules/lodash/lodash.js node_modules/globule/node_modules/lodash/dist/lodash.js node_modules/grunt-contrib-less/node_modules/lodash/dist/lodash.js node_modules/grunt-contrib-less/node_modules/lodash/lodash.js node_modules/grunt-contrib-watch/node_modules/lodash/dist/lodash.js node_modules/grunt-contrib-watch/node_modules/lodash/lodash.js node_modules/grunt-curl/node_modules/lodash/dist/lodash.js node_modules/grunt-curl/node_modules/lodash/lodash.js node_modules/grunt-legacy-log-utils/node_modules/lodash/dist/lodash.js node_modules/grunt-legacy-log-utils/node_modules/lodash/lodash.js node_modules/grunt-legacy-log/node_modules/lodash/dist/lodash.js node_modules/grunt-legacy-log/node_modules/lodash/lodash.js node_modules/grunt-legacy-util/node_modules/lodash/lodash.js node_modules/grunt-ng-constant/node_modules/lodash/dist/lodash.js node_modules/grunt-ng-constant/node_modules/lodash/lodash.js node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/lodash/lodash.js node_modules/grunt/node_modules/lodash/lodash.js node_modules/jshint/node_modules/lodash/chain/lodash.js node_modules/lodash/chain/lodash.js node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt/node_modules/lodash/lodash.js node_modules/preprocess/node_modules/lodash/lodash.js node_modules/protractor/node_modules/lodash/lodash.js