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Hey guys,
Welcome to another edition of Import React by Cosden Solutions!
This week’s issue dives into React’s growing complexity, a real-world useEffect meltdown at Cloudflare, and how Elm’s discipline can make you a safer React dev.
Plus: Next.js SEO tips, AI-assisted refactors, and a curious peek at Apple’s secret CSS.
Let's get into the newsletter! 🤙
⚡️ The Latest In React
🤷 Is React Killing Frontend Innovation?
Loren Stewart argues that React is no longer winning on technical merit, it’s winning by default, and that default is slowing innovation across the frontend ecosystem. Teams often choose React reflexively rather than evaluating which framework best fits their constraints, creating a cycle where network effects outweigh technical fit. As a result, alternatives like Svelte, Solid, and Qwik, each with significant innovations, struggle for adoption, not because they lack merit, but because they’re rarely given a chance.
😂 Cloudflare outage due to excessive useEffect API calls
Cloudflare engineers traced their September 2025 outage to a misuse of React’s useEffect hook. A new object in the dependency array caused the hook to fire on every render, hammering their Tenant Service API with repeated calls. That overload cascaded into widespread dashboard and API failures.
🫙 How to keep package.json under control
Tom MacWright argues that bloated node_modules and giant package.json files aren’t always a sign of tech debt, they're sometimes just the cost of building real stuff. In Val Town’s case, 863MB of dependencies might sound wild, but much of it is justified. Still, he lays out a clear case for dependency hygiene: read every new package (except React), understand what you’re adding, and trim unused code with tools like Knip and Renovate. Dependencies are inevitable, but managing them well is a craft.
🦺 Writing Safer Reducers in React
After months in Elm, the author returned to React and immediately felt the lack of enforced discipline, especially around useReducer. Elm’s compiler forces you to handle every state case; React just lets you silently skip them with a default case. The result? React gives you the freedom to be sloppy, from untyped actions to side effects leaking through useEffect. The lesson: without constraints, React’s flexibility becomes fragility, and discipline has to come from you, not the tool.
👀 SEO Guidelines for Your App
Strong SEO is essential for any modern web app, and that applies to React too, especially in frameworks like Next.js. This guide emphasizes how React developers can boost discoverability with metadata, structured data, and optimized images, all while keeping Core Web Vitals in check. Next.js offers helpful defaults like SSR and SSG, but SEO still requires deliberate setup, using <Head> properly, defining sitemaps, and managing bundle size.
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Quick Links
A highly customizable React library for creating drag-and-drop tier lists.
A website that tests whether React Frameworks can handle RSCs.
OpenAI introduces GPT-5-Codex, GPT-5 optimized for agentic coding.
🧠 AI & General Programming
🤖 Tearing Down a Decade of Code with AI
At monday.com, breaking up a massive JavaScript monolith was once projected to take 8 person-years, until they built Morphex. This AI-powered migration tool shrunk the timeline to just 6 months, transforming a daunting refactor into a manageable project. The team shares why they built it, how they used it, and what it taught them about applying AI to real-world engineering challenges.
🍎 Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content
Apple quietly added a private CSS property, -apple-visual-effect, that enables Liquid Glass effects in WKWebViews, but it’s locked behind a private API. While it looks stunning and technically works if hacked in, you’ll get rejected from the App Store for using it. Still, its existence hints at Apple using webviews far more seamlessly in iOS than we realize, suggesting that polished web-based UI is already hiding in plain sight.
😕 Why do software developers love complexity?
Kyrylo Silin explores why developers gravitate toward complexity, even when simplicity often serves better. Tools like React, he argues, layer mental overhead and abstraction, turning basic tasks into architectural feats, while vanilla JS often gets the job done with far less noise. But complexity sells: it signals expertise, invites curiosity, and becomes a status symbol in a culture obsessed with innovation.
🥱 Boring Work Needs Tension
Mohammad Aziz argues that dev work gets boring when it lacks challenge, but everyday issues offer plenty to fix. Slow CI/CD? Misconfigured databases? Latency across regions? These common problems are worth solving and can make the work more engaging. If your job doesn’t push you, tackle real issues in side projects. Chasing tension keeps things interesting.
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Darius Cosden