React Breaking Changes

The cluster debates the stability of React and its ecosystem, focusing on frequent breaking changes, paradigm shifts, and upgrade pains especially with React Router, contrasting claims of easy maintenance with experiences of rewrites and churn.

➡️ Stable 0.7x Web Development
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Keywords

SSR TS RSC JS Riot.js ReactRouter JavaScript MUI YouTube RPC react breaking changes breaking changes angular router vue app framework major

Sample Comments

nicoburns Mar 29, 2021 View on HN

Try React. Breaking changes are few and far between, generally very easy to update to (a few hours at most for a medium sized app), and they almost always introduce new "new way" of doing thing at least one release before the old way is removed (if it ever is).

the_gipsy Aug 15, 2023 View on HN

I've seen those React projects get rewritten.

macdonst Jan 31, 2022 View on HN

Except for React introduces major changes with every new version causing thrash.

waboremo Nov 15, 2022 View on HN

No because the React team changes their approach every other year anyways.

elwayman02 Jun 21, 2019 View on HN

The React ecosystem introduces huge breaking changes and paradigm shifts literally all the time... coughreactroutercough

belter Jul 12, 2023 View on HN

The new version of React took some priority...

genmud May 27, 2023 View on HN

Hard disagree… react is probably one of the best examples of this. React 15/16/17/18 over this period of time is a nightmare to maintain for people who don’t keep up with react if they want to casually jump in or out of.If you built an app in react 16 and wanted to upgrade to 18, using the documentation it almost resembles 2 different frameworks. Sure, maybe the code executes, but all the js devs would be like “why did you write it like that”?

cshenoy Sep 16, 2016 View on HN

Not trying to defend anyone here but I think you're making the wrong comparison. React (the library) isn't changing. Just like Elixir, JavaScript (the language) is changing for the better and almost everything is backward compatible. What folks are upset with here is react-router, an optional, third party routing library dependent on React. Authors should be allowed to improve their own projects otherwise they become stagnant as the libraries and languages they depend on evolve. It

nenadg Nov 19, 2024 View on HN

yeah? now try running 4 years old React project, it's a hell on earth.

robertoandred Oct 9, 2025 View on HN

React has had very few breaking changes.