News: State of JS 2023 Survey Results, React Drama Updates, and Adobe Sued by FTC

Front-End Fire

Although we’re already halfway through 2024, this week the State of JavaScript survey for 2023 dropped, and the hosts weighed in and discussed the results they found most interesting.

This year the survey provided a lot more write in options instead of predefined lists, which made extrapolating clear answers in many cases more difficult than it otherwise would have been, but there were still some clear winners in terms of usage and popularity among respondents. React and Next.js continued to dominate in the framework wars, Vite was beloved by most everyone, and the new category of AI tools was dominated by ChatGPT. There’s lots of interesting data here to peruse, but also some questions about the accuracy of results with having to normalize so many written responses.

Another topic of discussion was the new release of htmx 2.0. It’s dropping support for Internet Explorer, breaking out all the previously built-in extensions from the main project, and (most exciting of all) now offers a dark-mode version of the website.

We get an update on the React Suspense drama that began last week when the React team fundamentally wanted to change how Suspense is handled in React 19, and many library maintainers who rely on Suspense under the hood voiced concerns that it would severely impact how their libraries work. The React team has since backed off changing Suspense, and agreed to find a solution that works better for everyone, and we’ll update you on what that solution might be as soon as we know more.

And finally, Adobe continues to make headlines this year as the US Federal Trade Commission sues it over confusing and hard-to-cancel subscription plans. For a company as big and successful as Adobe, the fact that it uses confusing and obfuscated terms and conditions to penalize users who try to cancel subscriptions is shameful, and the US FTC is taking a stand against it.

News:

• Paige - htmx 2.0 is released
• Jack - State of JS 2023 results are in
• TJ - The US FTC sues Adobe (Full complaint)

Bonus news:

• The React team reverses course on proposed Suspense changes and Tkdodo’s summary of the Suspense drama
• Blue Collar Coder video on React Suspense

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Three Body Problem novel
• Jack - Cascadia JS conference
• TJ - Yellow Altra running shoes

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or Tweet us on X @front_end_fire.

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