The React Love-Hate Relationship

You install one tiny date formatting library and suddenly your node_modules folder is the size of a 747. Then you build your "tiny React app" and somehow it's still pulling in half the internet despite tree shaking supposedly removing unused code. Tree shaking is that magical build optimization that's supposed to eliminate dead code from your bundle. In theory, it only includes what you actually import. In practice? Well, your final bundle is still mysteriously 2MB because some dependency deep in the chain decided to import the entire lodash library for one function. The ratio here is painfully accurate. You start with a massive airplane hangar of dependencies, shake the tree real hard, and end up with... a slightly smaller airplane hangar. But hey, at least webpack says it's optimized.

The pinnacle of technical specifications right here! Nothing says "master prompter" like the incredibly detailed bug report: "the whole app is buggy. Please fix everything." Developers absolutely LOVE these vague instructions that give them zero actionable information. It's like telling a doctor "my body hurts, cure me" and expecting a precise diagnosis. The TypeScript file extension (.tsx) makes it even better - someone's React component is apparently having issues, but good luck figuring out what they are! This is the digital equivalent of pointing at a car and saying "it's broken" without mentioning that it's out of gas.

The truth bomb that launched a thousand uncomfortable laughs at a dev conference. Nothing says "modern web development" like creating 47MB of JavaScript dependencies to avoid writing display: flex; justify-content: center; . Meanwhile, the audience is divided between those nodding in agreement and those who just published their "Revolutionary CSS-in-JS Solution" on GitHub yesterday. The irony of someone presenting this while probably using a JS framework to power their slides is just *chef's kiss*.

AI bros hyping up the next revolutionary app built by prompt engineers who discovered that ChatGPT can write a todo list in React. Meanwhile, the rest of us are still waiting for literally any AI-generated app that solves an actual problem instead of being a glorified API wrapper with a gradient background. But sure, tell me again how your AI-powered note-taking app that hallucinates half your meeting notes is going to disrupt the entire SaaS industry. The field is indeed full of flowers and possibilities, none of which include working production code.

The eternal struggle of developers trying to help non-tech friends with their computers. You innocently type "npm install" to set up a cool project, and suddenly you're being accused of cyber espionage by someone who thinks command line = hacking. Nothing says "I'm a dangerous computer criminal" quite like installing a React todo app. The best part? Explaining that npm stands for "Node Package Manager" only makes you sound even more suspicious. Next time just tell them you're "downloading more RAM" – they'll believe that.

So you're telling me the "human" support agent who swore they weren't a robot just happened to spit out a perfect React component faster than I could open Stack Overflow? Ah yes, nothing says "real person" like instantaneously generating 30 lines of useState hooks and inline styling without a single typo. That's not ChatGPT with a mustache and trenchcoat, definitely not. The most human thing about "Ankur" is probably the 3-second delay they added before responding to seem like they're actually typing.