Having spent the past week deep in cursor, it's amazing for building out a basic web app.. but getting it to a point of productivity takes a while..
Command line install for latest svelte.. nope npx install is now deprecated, have to do it another way.. ok, let's go old school and read the docs.
Great, it's up and running, but nope, Svelte has just hit V5 and the LLM isn't aware of the changes.. ok, do I drop back to 4 on a new code write, or spend the time to get a decent .cursorrules in place to make sure it's using the right version.
Ok, that's in, but look tailwind is too new too.. ok, fine let's get that into .cursorrules..
Oh look, daisy has a v5 coming in 15 days, luckily I got in there just in time..
I thought svelte, tailwind and daisy were the one true way nowadays!
I now have a rule in my cursorrules that asks for any errors that I spot in the code (related to wrong versions) results in both the fix and a rule for the cursorrules so it doesn't happen again. That works well.
The deepseek advancements will allow more frequent retraining incorporating updates, it used to likewise take months for the Google index to update: you could tell because they listed how many sites were indexed on the homepage.
The actual truth is that you don’t need any of these frameworks at all. Vanilla JS & HTML has come a long way, and LLMs like Claude can build Vanilla JS with no trouble.
Both things can be true. I have also been frustrated trying to get LLMs to work with SwiftUI, given that it’s slightly newer, changing frequently, and has lower adoption relative to something like React.
Honestly this is a short term problem. Eventually the models will have larger context windows and will be able to easily browse brand new documentation or example code.
No such thing as one true way with React and the pain is just as bad if not sometimes worse.
Do you choose createreact app / webpack / vite / next.js ?
Do you choose built in react state/contexts, redux, recoil, zustand, jotai state libraries?
Do you do data tables yourself or use the behemoths TanStack, react-table-libray, MUI x-data-grid
What about HTTP requests? Fetch api? axios? rtk-quey?
What about forms and validation? KISS simple, do it yourself? react-hook-form + zod, tanstack form?
Now how do you integrate them all in to your app, managing each edge case for each dependency with their own opinionated way of doing things not quite neatly working with your other dependency but can brute force it to work with some effort and hacks?
I find things like doing basic vanilla JS, or even things like of Svelte or Elm far less pain than React projects i've worked on. Svelte/Elm did require reading the docs not relying on a LLM.
Looking at the react devs in my company, they already live in a world of pain and confusion. So many simple, silly things turn complicated because of it.
Command line install for latest svelte.. nope npx install is now deprecated, have to do it another way.. ok, let's go old school and read the docs.
Great, it's up and running, but nope, Svelte has just hit V5 and the LLM isn't aware of the changes.. ok, do I drop back to 4 on a new code write, or spend the time to get a decent .cursorrules in place to make sure it's using the right version. Ok, that's in, but look tailwind is too new too.. ok, fine let's get that into .cursorrules..
Oh look, daisy has a v5 coming in 15 days, luckily I got in there just in time..
I thought svelte, tailwind and daisy were the one true way nowadays!
I now have a rule in my cursorrules that asks for any errors that I spot in the code (related to wrong versions) results in both the fix and a rule for the cursorrules so it doesn't happen again. That works well.