Panel Discussion: The Leland Prediction

Hi, everyone, my name is Andre Calazans. I'm a head of vetting at G2I, and I'm here joined with Tejas, Ariane, and Anurag, where we're going to be talking about Leeland's prediction. If you guys don't remember this tweet, it happened back in 2017, where he mentioned that he hoped to see React and React Native B and become even more popular, plus see everybody be using something other than JavaScript with React, something with a strongly typed language. Let's see if that prediction panned out and let's see what our panelists here have to say about it.

Before I continue, I'm going to ask everyone to introduce themselves and tell us who they are and what they're working on. Ariane, why don't you start this out? Hey, cheers. Yes, my name is Ariane. I have been working with software development for over nine years. I work for G2I in one of our clients that's called uiTV. I'm a React Native Developer there. Awesome. And we also have Anuraag. Hi there. So my name is Anuraag. I am a self-taught front-end developer from India, currently working at Timeless Ventures. I'm currently also at college pursuing my bachelor's degree. And yeah, we're looking forward to this panel discussion. Thank you. And lastly, the most famous person in this panel, Mr. Tejas. Hey, I'm Tejas. I also currently, as of this moment, work alongside Andrey. Andre? Andrey? That's Andrey at G2I and write a bunch of code and do some tech stuff with him there. Very cool. Awesome. So we joined in this, we thought of this discussion because it was quite interesting that back in 2017, Leland was talking about how he was seeing the trends, and that React and React become even more popular than it was at that time. So let's start at the first prediction, which was a two year prediction. So it would have been around 2019. What do you all think about this? Is React and React Native still very popular and at what is it being good at solving that makes it popular? I'm going to start with Ariane. How do you see this question? Yeah, I think React and React Native are even more popular than four years ago, because the way they improve it, when it was released we had this for example class component, which class component is more based on object oriented programming.

Hi everyone, my name is Andre Calazans. I'm Head of Vetting at G2I and I'm here joined with Tejas, Ariane, and Anurag, where we're going to be talking about Lead Lens Prediction. If you guys don't remember the suite, it happened back in 2017 where he mentioned that he hoped to see React and React Native be and become even more popular, plus see everybody be using something other than JavaScript with React, something with a strongly typed language. Let's see if that prediction panned out and let's see what our panelists here have to say about it.

Before I continue, I'm going to ask everyone to introduce themselves and tell us who they are and what they're working on. Ariane, why don't you start this out? Hi. Sure. Yes, my name is Ariane. I have been working with software development for over nine years. I work for G2I and one of our clients that's called UITV. I'm a React Native developer there. I'm a React Native developer. Awesome.

And lastly, the most famous person in this panel, Mr. Tejus. Hey, I'm Tejus. I also currently, as of this moment, work alongside Andre. Andre? Andre? That's Andre. At G2I. And write a bunch of code and do some tech stuff with him there, so. Very cool. Awesome. So we thought of this discussion because it was quite interesting that back in 2017, Leland was talking about how he was seeing the trends and that React and React Native was going to become even more popular than it was at that time.

And now we've seen the evolution, now we have hooks and we have functional components. It's become more and more easy to use. The manage we have improved the way we manage our props and state. So, it's, and what I see it's become even more popular within big companies. Since, from my experience working at UITV, that we build React Native apps for TVs and the company was recently acquired by WarnerMedia. And so, and we are going to release the new HBO app using React Native. Now, so this is insane how it became popular and why don't we use it. Amazing.

So, you think the evolution of React and its constant improvement is also making it more attractive to people and even big enterprise getting into this. I mean, WarnerMedia, they're behind HBO and a whole bunch of companies, right? It's insane to see how it has become so popular in evolution.

And I think if I can release a prediction here, I can tell that in two, four, five... No, wait. Sorry, sorry, sorry. We're going to get there. Hold on.

And what about you Anuraga? What do you think? What is React really good at solving, like in your perspective? I think React's most important part is the component model. The component model makes sense I would say. I think React excels at innovation. I would like to compare React with NASA. NASA takes the first step and then all the other people like SpaceX and other people take the little steps to go forward. Same with React. React also takes the first steps to do the innovation, like server-side components, the composition with hooks, and other. This kind of innovation I see mostly on React and the ecosystem around it. So I would say React is very good at this innovation. It's breaking ground and innovating in the space and making people follow it.

It's really cool that you said that. In the thread, if you look back at, so this was a Twitter thread, right, from the lead line posted, and you will see how people are remembering similar tools today in the space that is replicating what React already does. So we got SwiftUI. You have now JetCompose, and Flutter, and all of these other tools.

But and for you, Tejas, what do you think, what is React still lacking that is not really doing a good job at? I'm going to ask the hard question to Tejas. And where do you think is there room for improvement that would possibly dethrone React from its current position? Wow, that's a really good question for me. But I like, I think React, it's difficult. I would say this, I think what I'm about to say is that, you know, I'm about to identify a place where React is lacking in people, not just me, but the community in general. I've spoken to people who say it's lacking. But it's very clear to see also what I'm about to say is something where it's not lacking. And that's because React plays this game of being an extraction layer, and when you do that, it's so hard to find the right level. You either end up over-abstracting, which we do internally at G2I sometimes, or under-abstracting, which we also do. And React, I feel, doesn't do the best job at being opinionated.

Again, that's by design, right? But because of that, I feel like if somebody is joining React today, and they have every reason to because the popularity is only going up, there's going to be confusion. Like, oh, do I use ReachRouter? Do I use ReactRouter? What is ReactRouterDOM? Should I use that instead? And there's a new CSS and JS library every week or so. And so there's room for improvement there. And thankfully, the improvement exists. There's things like Next.js or Remix Run, stuff like that, which helps. But yeah, React on its own has a serious hole there that the community fills. But, again, I feel like this is by design, right? But it could possibly improve there.

The additional thing I'd say, just to kind of wrap it up, to wrap up my answer to this question, is I feel like React could help developers, just by nature of being a library, because when you ship a library you get to also ship your opinions. They could help developers build apps in a way that ships less code from the beginning. And we're seeing some things being done in this space already with suspense for code splitting. But generally more things like that which kind of hint to the consumer, maybe split this out, code split this.

Awesome. Yeah. Excellent points. I really love – go ahead, Anurag. So also adding to Tejas's answer, I would say React also need to innovate on the compiler system. Compilers are the new future, right? I would say take Svelte. Svelte is compiling the source code to ship less and less bytes to the end user. So I think React in future, implement some kind of compiler system that would be also very innovative. I think it's also needed because most of the other frameworks are already doing this. Svelte, Vue. Vue also has a compiler and Svelte is a compiler. So I would say React is lacking in this scenario. I would agree with you and add just one tidbit. There's actually work happening. I've seen that Facebook to do that using something called prepack.io. I don't know how far that's going, but maybe it's not a compiler, but it's very much in that same domain that would allow for like shipping less code with a transpilation step. I'd love to see prepack become a thing in the mainstream of web dev.

Amazing, great comments. And I think even Shawn, aka Swix on Twitter, talked about something around compilers and everything is a compiler and the tendency towards abstracting the way to tools. And then Tej has touched on an interesting point, how using that, having a compiler set, you could then reduce the amount of code we need to write to actually output good production apps. And then you touched about hitting the right level of abstraction which I loved. Because it was a controversial tweet this week from, I think, I don't, I won't remember his last name, I think it was Adam Rackis talking about, you know, questioning hooks and is it the right abstraction. And it's exactly that. It's really tough to find the right level of abstractions, right? Yeah, I agree. And you know, I think if we expect each other like, or if we as consumers of React expect the React or React Native core teams to get that right straight out of the bat, it's a bit unrealistic. It's like, how? I feel like from all, I've spent a lot of time writing code, I feel like you don't really know the right level of abstraction unless you keep doing it for a while and then you develop a feel for it.

Kind of like a sixth sense. So, you know, to say, hey, hooks are wrong and the React team was wrong and it's bad, I think may not be the right approach because it's not bad, it's experimentation. Like we'll figure it out over time.

Awesome. I'm going to ask studio now to put up a question for everyone. Of course, we're talking React, but we would love to see if anyone is actually using something other than React. If I was to ask if you were using React, I think we're going to get a lot of yeses, so I'm just going to ask. So, studio, show the poll question number three, which is, do you know any production using something other than React as their UI framework? If yes, try to add your answer for what is it. I'd love to check this back afterwards to see.

And I'm going to ask the panelists here, which frameworks would you guess will appear in the yeses at the end? Maybe, I don't know about Flutter. I've seen this popularity has increased over the time. And I have seen, for example, in Wikidding, a bunch of new jobs looking for Flutter developers. So maybe it's something that we have to watch. I don't think, it's my personal opinion, that Flutter will be as popular as React Native. The last two years, I guess. Because React Native is still very popular and it's becoming more popular, as I said before. And also, I think one of the advantages of React and React Native is built in for JavaScript. So it's one of the most popular programming languages. When people start programming, for example, they start with JavaScript. They learn Algorithm with JavaScript. So I think this is one of the reasons that React will be still popular.

Interesting. Good point. Yeah, JavaScript is always easier to get started with. Yeah. And you, Anurag, what frameworks do you think will show up for the yeses on that question? Yeah, I think as I don't have an opinion on Flutter or anything like that because I didn't use Flutter yet but I think the React Native has a very good chance because the barrier to entry is very low especially if you already know React. That's the adoption. Like the core principle is that learn once and write everywhere. So I think that's why the popularity of React and React-based libraries and the JavaScript ecosystem has all like this. The popularity and adoption is huge.

That's why I think React will grow as a framework.

Okay. And you say just what other framework besides React and React Native do you think will show up in the yeses on that question? For sure Vue. Vue is popular... I think it's way more popular than React devs give it credit for. I think for us with React we're in a bit of a React bubble. But Vue is popular and doing some really... I think GitLab for example uses Vue for GitLab. It's used at scale. I think. I'm not sure about GitLab but I have seen it used in some larger apps. So Vue for sure. I don't know about Vite with Vue but I imagine so because it's in the same ecosystem but I'm almost certain we'll see some solid Vue adoption in the answers.

Nice. Yeah I'll put my money on Svelte because there's a lot of noise coming from that crowd. I get to see it in production though. I'd love maybe in the Discord or where people are chatting if they can put links to production Svelte apps I would love to see this because I want to build something in Svelte myself but I don't know if it's for lobby products or for large apps at this point. I heard of a fintech company in Brazil using Svelte to place an embedded app in their credit card machines it was pretty cool to see that but we're not here to talk about Svelte but that's an interesting thing.

So the next thing though is that, the second prediction was that in four years from now back in 2017 that we would be using React but except in a strong typed language. I think this was where the salt was at, the nice prediction that I wish had, well I won't say what I wish, but was this fulfilled in your opinion? I'll start with Tejas on this one. Could you repeat that? The signal wasn't clear, I saw a graphic but the audio wasn't clear, could you repeat that? The fourth year prediction is we would be using React except in a strongly typed language. In your opinion was this prediction fulfilled? I think so, for sure. Based on our internal G2I data, we're seeing more, I don't know how many numbers I can share exactly because of data protection, but we're seeing a lot of people require TypeScript with Canvas. They'll come to us and be like, hey, I want to hire four React developers. By the way, bonus points if they have TypeScript. In some cases, it's a hard requirement. For us, Andre, you and I, the code we write every day is fully TypeScript. I know a number of engineers, even Adam Rakus, for example, where TypeScript's a thing everywhere. I'm inclined to say, yes, that prediction spot on. It says strongly type languages, so TypeScript, yes.

We're seeing maybe some Dart, too, with Flutter on the React Native side, but I'm not seeing other strongly-typed languages. For example, I know ReasonML tried to be a thing with ReasonReact. I've yet to see that be commercially prevalent.

Yeah, I think when Leland made this tweet, he was inspired by ReasonML, now Rescript. I don't know if his actual thoughts came to fulfillment, but Arianne, what does TypeScript tries to solve, and why is it becoming the main way to actually develop React apps today, in your opinion?

Yeah, I can say I started with TypeScript because I was... No, at the beginning I think TypeScript wouldn't change at all my... The way I develop at all, it wouldn't help me. So, and then I decided to give TypeScript a chance and it changed my life, you know? Now every project that I start working on, I use TypeScript. And when I have to maintain some app that is not using TypeScript, it's a pain, you know? Because I think the most, you know, the... I think the TypeScript has solved the most is, for example, when using... We can type objects, for example, when we type or create a schema for a API response, for example. You know? At the time we are developing, we know what products are coming from the API. We know what's the redux state, for example, the global state. What's the structure? You know, when you're developing.

But when you're going to maintain a code, for example, one month from now, you know, we won't remember everything. And TypeScript, I think it helps a lot. Helps 100%, you know? So TypeScript makes by the time you're adding TypeScript to a product, it can be a little pain. It can have a little pain. We have to type everything. And we set the link to not allow any types. So we have to type everything. It's the property. We have only one property to the font. But it helps. The main thing for me, that TypeScript helps is when we have to maintain the code. It makes it a lot easier.

Yeah, and that takes me to a connected topic. Like you mentioned, having predictability and also knowing the impact surface of the code you're writing. But then having to type everything because things can be any. So is TypeScript a strongly typed language though? How do you all feel about this? I'll let Anuraag take a stab.

Yeah, I would say it's strongly typed, but it gives you a lot of space to expand upon later on. Instead of doing any, I would recommend doing tsignore and you can later on, after learning a bit more of TypeScript, you can later on come back and say, yeah, I can now type this. I would make it more type safe. So it's incrementally, you can incrementally adopt the code base to be more types, and speaking of TypeScript, I think the type system is so powerful, like it's literally, you can do type level programming in TypeScript types. Like it's, I would say there is, there is an issue in GitHub, in TypeScript people that says TypeScript can, like TypeScript type system is what, what does the, I forgot the names. Like you can literally do programming. I, I myself created a CSS parser on the type level. So that's pretty crazy things you can do with the typesets. And the dx it provides, I think is the best in class. So I think it's pretty great. Good. Excellent. Very good points, actually. I, and I think that is exactly why it, it is a popular as it is. And it grew in popularity in contrast to ReasonML, Rescript and other alternatives that are very strictly typed and don't allow a lot of room for you to go easy on it initially.

So those are good points. And I want to ask the studio now to, to, to tell, to tell us, to put up another question that we have. All right. We have the, the results already here. Let me just open up on the big screen so I can see. So we are seeing View Angular, No, Flutter, Ember. Okay. Yeah. Ember as well. Phoenix Preact, of course, Preact. Lit-Html, which is okay. Web Components. All right. Cool. There is, there's some options. I mean, Angular is still very big as expected. Right? Awesome. So the next poll question is, is also about if you're using anything compiled to React or JavaScript for production applications other than, of course, just JavaScript and TypeScript or actually the question has TypeScript as an option. So you could use that one. Let's see if, if any other language compiled to JavaScript is being used. We have some options there, but of course somebody can add an extra option. We'll come back to this at the end.

And now we can just go into the final part of this conversation. Before I get into that, the interesting thing is, if you look back at Leland's prediction, he wasn't really expecting TypeScript to be the main language being used as the strong type language. In his opinions, it was ReasonML with Rescript or something like Swift, or even Kotlin. There's Kotlin script that compiles to JavaScript as well. Those were interesting opinions at the time. Now we are in 2021, 15 of April. If we had to think about 2025, what kind of prediction would you make about this space, about the industry of writing components, writing UI elements? What do you think it's going to look like? What prediction would you make? Do you want to go first, Tejas, because you didn't answer the last time? I can, but like I genuinely don't know how to answer this question. I have to give it to Leland, man, that's very brave to make such a prediction.

And it turned out to be spot on. This isn't my gift. So if I was to look into 2025, one trend we're seeing now is TypeScript is immensely valuable, so I feel like if I was to predict 2025, strongly-typed languages will not go anywhere for sure. I think we might continue to see more declarative abstractions on top of otherwise imperative things. So I feel like React has set a trend. Whether React lives or dies is one thing, irrespective of that. It's set this declarative component model that I think will carry through to 2025 for sure.

Amazing. Great point. And what about you, Anurag? What do you think? Yeah, I think in 5 years we will need to be compiling TypeScript. TypeScript is great, but it's a bit slow to build in a large project. So I think in the next 5 years we will be using Rust and other low-level performing languages to compile TypeScript. It's already happening. There's a SWC compiler to compile TypeScript for JavaScript. It's already happening, so I would say it will be going to happen in about 5 years.

That's an interesting point and I also think tooling is going to get more and more built with lower-level languages and faster languages. Orta, I think everybody knows Orta, he's famous in the JavaScript community and he now works with TypeScript. He made a post this week actually about TypeScript's popularity, and he talked about, he mentioned how there were some rumors that the first version of TypeScript before TypeScript was actually written in C++. I would say that for that to happen, for Rust to happen, I would say it needs to come from Microsoft. I don't know, but I wish it could happen and that could work. Not Microsoft, sorry. Google, right? Is behind TypeScript. No, it's Microsoft. No, Microsoft. Yeah. Whoa, just got confused there.

And what about you, Arianne? What predictions would you make? I know you started talking about React Native, but what else would you say? I would just make the changes and talk about TypeScript. I think TypeScript will become a job requirement the same for every web developer, even for the basic. But I think every web developer will have to know JavaScript. Sorry, TypeScript.

And about React, I don't know if I'm being bold, but I think React, maybe in the future, we can now, we have, for example, React Native building for a while. So maybe in the future we can have desktop apps with React, you know? Who knows? And for example, when you talk about today, we have a bunch of new projects with React and React Native. So this part that's new today in four, three years, we have to maintain them. You know? I think we have new projects as well. And we also have to maintain these old ones that became old in a few years, you know? So my prediction is React will still become popular. Will still be popular. But it's hard to be 100% sure because if you think about six, five years ago when Angular was released and was very popular and was the hype at the moment, who would imagine that we would have another framework that was React that will take the Angular's place, you know? So, but my prediction, the way React is solid and widely used for developers and new developers interesting in using React and learning React, you know, I think it'd be still the hype in a few years.

I also currently, as of this moment, work alongside Andre. Andre? Andre? That's Andre. At G2I. And write a bunch of code and do some tech stuff with him there, so. Very cool. Awesome. So we thought of this discussion because it was quite interesting that back in 2017, Leland was talking about how he was seeing the trends and that React and React Native was going to become even more popular than it was at that time. So let's start at the first prediction, which was a two-year prediction, so it would have been around 2019. What do you all think about this? Is React and React Native still very popular and at what is it being good at solving that makes it popular? I'm going to start with Ariane. How do you see this question? I think React and React Native are even more popular than four years ago because the way it improved when it was released, we had these, for example, class components. With class components, it's more based on object-oriented programming. And now we've seen the evolution. Now we have hooks and we have functional components. It's become more and more easier to use. We have improved the way we manage our props and state. And what I see, it's becoming even more popular within big companies. From my experience, working at UI TV, we built React Native apps for TVs. This company was recently acquired by Warner Media. And so, we're going to release the new HBO app, using React Native. And also, it is insane how it became popular, and widely used. Amazing, so you think the evolution of React and its constant improvement is also making it more attractive to people and even big enterprise, getting into this. Warner Media, they're behind HBO and a whole bunch of companies, right? Yeah, it's insane to see how it has become so popular and evolution this way. And I think if I can release a prediction here, I can tell that in two, four, five... Wait, wait. That's the end. Sorry, sorry, sorry. We're gonna get there, hold on. And what about you Anuraga? What is React really good at solving, in your perspective? I think React's most important part is the component model. It brings... The component model it has is the most...

Makes sense, I would say. Makes sense. And I think React excels at innovation. I would like to compare React with NASA. NASA takes the first step, and then all the people like SpaceX and other people take the little steps to go forward. Same with React. React also takes the first steps to do the innovation, like server-side components, the composition with hooks, and other... This kind of innovation I see mostly on React and the ecosystem around it. So I would say React is very good at this innovation. Mm-hmm. So it's breaking ground and innovating in the space and making people follow it. It's really cool that you said that.

In the thread... So this was a Twitter thread that Leland posted. And you will see how people are remembering similar tools today in the space that is replicating what React already does. We got SwiftUI, you have now JetCompose, and we got Flutter and all of these other tools.

But what is React still lacking that is not really doing a good job at? I'm gonna ask the harder question to Tejas. Where do you think is there room for improvement that would possibly dethrone React from its current position? Wow, that's a really... That's a good question for me.

I think React... It's difficult. I would say this. I think what I'm about to say is, I'm about to identify a place where React is lacking, and people, not just me, but the community in general, I've spoken to people who say it's lacking. But it's very clear to see also what I'm about to say as something where it's not lacking. And that's because React plays this game of being an abstraction layer.

And when you do that, it's so hard to find the right level. You either end up over-abstracting, which we do internally at G2I sometimes, or under-abstracting, which we also do. And React, I feel, doesn't do the best job at being opinionated. Again, that's by design, right? But because of that, I feel like if somebody's joining React today, and they have every reason to, because the popularity is only going up, there's going to be confusion. Like, oh, do I use a Reach router? Do I use React router? What is React router DOM?

Should I use that instead? And there's a new CSS and JS library every week or so. And so that, I feel there's room for improvement there. And thankfully, the improvement exists. There's things like Next.js or Remix run, stuff like that, which helps. But yeah, React on its own has a serious hole there that the community fills. But again, I feel like this is by design, right? But it could possibly improve there. The additional thing I'd say just to kind of wrap it up, is to wrap up my answer to this question, is I feel like React could help developers just by nature of being a library, because when you ship a library, you get to also ship your opinions.

They could help developers build apps in a way that ships less code from the beginning. And we're seeing some things being done in this space already with suspense for code splitting. But generally more things like that, which kind of hint to the consumer, maybe split this out, code split this, or, you know. Awesome. Yeah, excellent points.

Yeah, excellent points. Go ahead Anurag. Yeah. So also adding to like Tejas's answer. So I would say like React also need to like innovate on the compiler system. Like compilers are the new future, right? I would say like take Svelte. Svelte is like compiling the source code to like ship less and less bytes to the end user. So I think React in future, like implement some kind of compiler system that would be also very innovative. And I think it's also needed because most of the frameworks are already doing this. Svelte, Vue. Vue also has a compiler and Svelte also is actions. Svelte is a compiler. So I would say React is lacking in this scenario. So I would agree with you and add just one tidbit.

There's actually work happening. I've seen at Facebook to do that using something called prepack, prepack.io. I don't know how far that's going, but maybe it's not a compiler, but it's very much in that same domain that would allow for like shipping less code with a transpilation step. I'd love to see prepack become a thing in the mainstream of web dev.

Amazing, great comments. And I think even Shawn, Mr. aka swigs on Twitter talked about something around compilers and everything is a compiler and the tendency towards abstracting the way to tools. And then Tejas touched on an interesting point how having a compiler step, you could then reduce the amount of code we need to write to actually output good production apps. And then you touched about hitting the right level abstraction, which I loved because it was a controversial tweet this week from I think, I don't, I won't remember his last name. I think it was Adam Rackis talking about, questioning hooks and is it the right abstraction? And it's exactly that. It's really tough to find the right level abstractions. Right?

Yeah, I agree. And it's not, I think if we expect each other, like as, or if we, as consumers of React, expect the react or React native core teams to get that right straight out of the bat, it's a bit unrealistic. It's like, how? I feel like from all, I've spent a lot of time writing code. I feel like you don't really know the right level of abstraction unless you keep doing it for awhile and then you develop a feel for it, kind of like a sixth sense. So, you know, to say, hey, hooks are wrong and the React team was wrong and it's bad, I think that may not be the right approach because it's not bad, it's experimentation.

Like we'll figure it out over time. Awesome. I'm going to ask Studio now to put up a question for everyone. Of course, we're talking React, but we would love to see if anyone is actually using something other than React. If I was to ask if you were using React, I think we're going to get a lot of yeses. So I'm just going to ask, so Studio, show the poll question number three, which is do you know any production apps using something other than React as their UI framework? If yes, try to add your answer for what is it? I would love to check this back afterwards to see.

I'm going to ask the panelists here, which frameworks would you guess will appear in the yeses, Ariane? Maybe... I don't know about Flutter. I've seen this popularity has increased over the time. And I have seen, for example, Wikidink, a bunch of new jobs looking for Flutter developers. So maybe it's something that we have to watch.

I don't think, it's my personal opinion, that Flutter will be popular as React Native. Not in the last two years, I guess. Because React Native is still very popular and it is becoming more popular, as I said before. And also I think one of the advantages of React and React Native is built in for Javascript. So I guess one of the most popular program language when people start programming, at least when I see, for example, they start with Javascript. They learn JavaScript. So I think this is one of the reasons that React will be still popular. Interesting. Good point. Yeah. Javascript is always easier to get started with.

Yeah. And you, Anurag, what frameworks do you think will show up for the yeses on that question? Yeah. I think as I don't have an opinion on Flutter or anything like that because I didn't use Flutter yet, but I think React Native has a very good chance because the barrier to entry is very low, especially if you already know React. That's the adoption. The core principle is that learn once and write everywhere. So I think that's why the popularity of React and React-based libraries and the JavaScript ecosystem has all like this. The popularity and adoption is huge. That's why I think React will grow as a framework.

Okay. And Yusef, just what other framework besides React and React Native do you think will show up in the yeses on that question? For sure, Vue. Vue is popular. I think it's way more popular than React devs give it credit for. I think for us with React, we're in a bit of a React bubble. But Vue is popular. And doing some really... I think GitLab, for example, uses Vue for GitLab. It's used at scale, I think. I'm not sure about GitLab, but I have seen it used in some larger apps. So Vue for sure. I don't know about Vite with Vue, but I imagine so, because it's like in the same ecosystem. But I'm almost certain we'll see some solid Vue adoption in the answers.

Nice. Yeah. I'll put my money on Svelte, because there's a lot of noise coming from that crowd. I'd like to see it in production though. Maybe in the Discord or where people are chatting, if they can put links to production Svelte apps, I would love to see this. Because I want to build something in Svelte myself, but I don't know if it's for hobby products or for large apps at this point. I just don't know. I heard of a fintech company in Brazil using Svelte to place an embedded app in their credit card machines. It was pretty cool to see that.

We're not here to talk about Svelte, but that's an interesting thing. The next thing, though, is that the second prediction was that in four years from now, back in 2017, that we would be using React, but except in a strong-typed language. I think this was where the salt was at. The nice prediction that I wish had... I won't say what I wish, but was this fulfilled, in your opinion?

I'll start with Tejas on this one. Could you repeat that? The signal wasn't clear. I saw a graphic, but the audio wasn't clear. Could you repeat that? So the fourth year prediction is that we would be using React, except in a strongly-typed language. In your opinion, was this prediction fulfilled?

I think so, for sure. Based on our internal G2I data, even, we're seeing more... I don't know how many numbers I can share exactly because of data protection, but we're seeing a lot of people require TypeScript. So, they'll come to us and be like, hey, I want to hire like four React developers. By the way, bonus points if they have TypeScript. Or, in some cases, it's a hard requirement. For us, Andrew, you and I, the code we write every day is fully TypeScript.

And I know a number of engineers, even... You mentioned Adam Rackus, for example, where TypeScript's a thing everywhere. So, I'm inclined to say yes, that prediction, spot on. But it says strongly typed languages. So, TypeScript, yes. We're seeing maybe some Dart too, with Flutter on the React native side. But I'm not seeing like other strongly typed for languages. Like, for example, I know ReasonML tried to be a thing with ReasonReact. I have yet to see that be commercially prevalent.

Yeah. I think when Leland made this tweet, he was inspired by ReasonML, now Rescript. And so, I don't know if his actual thoughts came to fulfillment. But Ariane, what does TypeScript try to solve? And why is it becoming the main way to actually develop React apps today, in your opinion?

Yeah, I can say I have, I started with TypeScript because I was, no, at the beginning I think TypeScript wouldn't change, at all, the way I develop, at all, it wouldn't help me. So, and then I decide to give TypeScript a chance, and it changed my life, you know. Now, every project that I start working on, I use TypeScript. And when I have to maintain some app that is not using TypeScript, it's a pain, you know, because I think the most, you know, the, I think with TypeScript, so it is, the most is, for example, when using, we can type objects.

For example, when we type or create a schema for API response, for example. So at a time we're developing, we know what properties will come from the API. We know what's the, the redux states, for example, the global state, what's the structure, you know, when you're developing, but we, when you're going to maintain a code, for example, one month from now, you know, we won't remember everything and TypeScript, I think it helps us a lot, helps a hundred percent, you know, so it makes by the time we were, when you were adding TypeScript to a project, it can be a little pain, it can have a little pain, know to, we have to type everything.

And we, we said that the link to, to not allow any, any types. So we have to type everything, the property has we, and we have only one property to the conference. So, but it helps the main thing for me, that TypeScript helps when we have to maintain the code. It makes it a lot easier. Yeah. And that takes me to us, to a connected topic, like you mentioned, having predictability and also knowing the impact surface of the code you're writing and, but then having to type everything because things can be any. So is TypeScript a strongly typed language though?

Yeah, I would say like it's strongly typed, but it gives you a lot of, I would say, space to expand upon later on. Like you can, instead of doing any, I would recommend like doing TS-ignore and you can later on, after learning a bit more of TypeScript, you can later come back and say, yeah, I can now type this. I would make it more type safe. So it's incrementally, you can incrementally add up the code base to be more type safe. And speaking of TypeScript, I think the type system is so powerful, like it's literally you can do type-level programming in TypeScript types, it's, I would say there is an issue in GitHub in TypeScript people that says TypeScript can, TypeScript type system is, what is the, I forget the name, like you can literally do programming. I myself created a CSS parser on the type level. So that's pretty crazy things you can do with typesets. And the DX it provides, I think the best in class. So I think it's pretty great.

Good. Excellent. Great points actually. And I think that is exactly why it is as popular as it is and it grew in popularity in contrast to reasonable rescript and other alternatives that are very strictly typed and don't allow a lot of room for you to go easy on it initially. So those are good points. And I want to ask the studio now to put up another question that we have. All right. We have the results already here. Let me just open up on the big screen so I can see. So we are seeing view, Angular, no, Flutter. Amber. Okay. Yeah. Amber as well. Phoenix, Preact, of course Preact. LitHTML, which is web components. All right. Cool. There are some options. I mean, Angular is still very big as expected, right? Awesome. So the next poll question is also about if you're using anything compiled to React or JavaScript for production applications, other than of course just JavaScript and TypeScript.

So the next poll question is also about if you're using anything compiled to React or JavaScript for production applications, other than of course just JavaScript and TypeScript. Or actually the question has TypeScript as an option, so you could use that one. Let's see if any other language compiled to JavaScript is being used. We have some options there, but of course somebody can add an extra option. We'll come back to this at the end.

And now we can just go into the final part of this conversation. Before I get into that, the interesting thing is if you look back at Leland's prediction, he wasn't really expecting TypeScript to be the main language being used, the strong type language. In his opinion, it was ReasonML with Rescript or something like Swift, or even Kotlin. There's Kotlin script that compiles JavaScript as well. But now we are in 2021, 15 April, if we had to look, think about 2025, what kind of prediction would you make about this space, about the industry of writing components, writing UI elements? What do you think it's going to look like? What prediction would you make?

You want to go first, Tejas? Because you didn't answer the last time. I can. But I genuinely don't know how to answer this question. I have to give it to Leland, man. That's very brave to make such a prediction. It turned out to be spot on. This isn't my gift. So if I was to look into 2025, one trend we're seeing now is TypeScript is immensely valuable. So I feel like if I was to predict 2025, strongly typed languages will not go anywhere for sure. I think we might continue to see more declarative abstractions on top of otherwise imperative things. So I feel like React has set a trend. Whether React lives or dies is one thing. Irrespective of that, it's set this declarative component model that I think will carry through to 2025 for sure.

Amazing. Great point. And what about you, Anurag? What do you think? Yeah, I think in five years we will need to be compiling the TypeScript. TypeScript is great, right? But it's a bit slow to build in a large project. So I think in the next five years we'll be using Rust and other low-level performant languages to compile TypeScript. It's already happening. There's a SWC compiler to compile TypeScript to JavaScript. It's already happening. So I would say it will happen in about five years.

That's an interesting point. And I also think tooling is going to get more and more built with lower level languages and faster languages. Ortega, I think everybody knows Ortega. He's famous in the JavaScript community and being involved. And he now works with TypeScript. He made a post this week actually about TypeScript's popularity. He mentioned how there were some rumors that the first version of TypeScript before TypeScript was actually written in C++. I would say that for that to happen, I would say it needs to come from Microsoft though. I don't know. But I wish it could happen and that could work. Not Microsoft, sorry. Google is behind TypeScript. No, it's Microsoft. No, Microsoft. Yeah, well, just got confused there.

And what about you, Arianne. What predictions would you make? I know you started talking about React Native. What else would you say? I just compliment the teachers. And I heard them talking about TypeScript. I think TypeScript will become a job requirement the same for every web developer.

I think TypeScript will become a job requirement the same for every web developer. Even for the basic. But I think every web developer will have to know JavaScript. Sorry, TypeScript. And about React. I don't know if I'm being bold. But I think React maybe in the future maybe we now we have, for example, React Native building for Web as well. Maybe in the future we can have build desktop apps with React. Who knows? And for example, when you talk about today, we have a bunch of new projects with React and React Native. So, this project that's new today for three years, we have to maintain them. You know? I think we have new projects as well. And we also have to maintain the old ones that became more old in a few years. You know? So, my prediction is React will still be popular. It will still be popular. And it's hard to be 100% sure. Because if you think about six, five years ago when Angular was released and was very popular and was the hype at the moment, you know, who would imagine that we'll have another framework that was React that will take the Angular's place. You know? So, what are my predictions? The way React is solid and, you know, widely used. Developers and new developers that are interested in using React and learning React, you know, I think it could be seen as hype in a few years.

Awesome. That's great. Great prediction. And that's it. Folks, thank you very much for listening to us. I just want to wrap up showing the results of the last poll. If we can, studio, let me just take a look here. TypeScript, everybody's compiling with TypeScript. Some are using Dart. Flo is still around, but all right. And Svelte is in there, CoffeeScript. All right. Very cool. Excellent. Now, if you want to take a risk at making a prediction, make a tweet making a prediction, hashtag G2I, hashtag Reactsummit. And definitely retweet your tweet. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you all, the panelists, for participating in this. It was a pleasure.