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This! There is also an entire generation of management gatekeepers that only approve of React stacks, because the population of React devs is so huge they step over one another for a job.

I have a moderately complex web application, lot's of heavy compute in the backend, in which I wrote a perfectly fine browser based vanilla JavaScript UI that is performant and does everything the application needs. However, ordinary users see it and say "it looks so old, like early web" and they literally don't want to be seen using "such old looking software". Their reason for rejection is a fashion argument, they think it makes them look old using it.

Okay, so I go looking for a front end developer to make my vanilla js look more modern, and I can't afford anybody except 3rd world React developers, who work amazingly fast and build my UI as fast as I can tell them what I need. The front end code is now 2-3 times larger than the backend, the UI looks just like all the other single page applications, and my new beta users are finally treating the project like this is viable new software and not some franken-monster of old and new. I actually receive useful feedback now, rather than complains that it "looks so old".



> However, ordinary users see it and say "it looks so old, like early web" and they literally don't want to be seen using "such old looking software".

Meanwhile, as an atypical user, I would much enjoy seeing more stuff like: https://khang-nd.github.io/7.css/

(Certainly in contrast--literal contrast--to some of the flat affordance-less stuff these days.)


Couldn't you just hire a designer that would have made your app look better with just CSS?


One would think, but they cost 2-5x what I've found just having it all redone in react costs.


Ouch!




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