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Not only is GitHub focused on AI, but they’re also making their UI slower and jankier by rewriting it in React.

I feel like a “Linear for GitHub” is due.



Is it true that it is React’s fault? Is there any other replacement for heavy user interaction, that is clearly more performative? You cannot do that on server side.


GitHub worked great for 15+ years without React everywhere. I'm finding interacting with issues to be a whole lot jankier over the past few months.


IIRC only search is React. Everything else is still Hotwire or Hotwire-like, with numerous bugs


GitHub Issues is React now - I think as of a month or so ago. Try running the React Developer Toolbar on those pages to see.


Whatever is at fault, their code viewer now sucks. I often cannot even use basic text functionality like double click + drag to highlight/select whole words. It has become broken software at some point.

For the code search one annoyance that they introduced was, that one needs to be logged in to search a project. Another annoyance is how the search works. Why, oh why, do soooo many programs/websites/software things have issues searching for a simple 100% substring match? There should always be an option in a search for most software, to search for exact substring without involving any magic. Then the checkbox to optionally ignore case. Only when this basic search functionality is ensured, should they care about developing anything else.


Just selecting text in the code viewer is so broken it drives me nuts everytime. Thankfully you can just press "." to open VS Code Web with the current file open.


Yes, there are lots of better options. React is around the bottom 25th percentile of frameworks when comparing speed. https://krausest.github.io/js-framework-benchmark/2025/table...


In my experience performance issues in React also creep in without it being obvious when developing, especially across a larger team. It tends to be more obvious with server-side frameworks like django or rails.


> Is there any other replacement for heavy user interaction, that is clearly more performative?

Well-written React?


After reading a bunch of stuff as result of this, I think you are the most correct. Difference in performance on different frameworks seems to be more like philosophical rather than practical.

It is enough that your website has just a couple of images, comparison of the "shipping size" of the runtime bundling becomes rather meaningless. It is the same for initial latency for showing the rendered content.

These frameworks were designed for heavy sites, and their "base speed" becomes irrelevant. If you understand how do they work and use them correctly, there shouldn't be that much difference. Assuming, that we use JavaScript on client-side in the end.


How many well-written code bases have you seen?

React is a PITA to learn, and even the easiest frameworks encounter devs who jump right in and commit shot code to deliver "value" right away, only for that code to live on forever haunting the devs left with mess after the founder coders move on.


Vue, Svelte, Solid.


SolidJS


Holy crap, is that why it's felt so syrupy recently? What was wrong with the old implementation?!


It wasn't React. Everyone knows modern applications must be written in React.


As a greybeard sysadmin, this is why I write pure html5/css3 with as little js as possible, and where it can't be avoided, vanilla with no frameworks.

I really have grown to hate most frameworks... (and I don't hate em, but for the devs who push them... it's become the new Java, another bane of linux admins everywhere.)


We are in Hell. Ugh.


Linear itself has a workflow for Github: https://linear.app/docs/github


Linear? That website makes my laptop heat up like nuts.


If also hijacks standard browser shortcuts: I try to open the file menu with alt-f, but instead it (un-) marks the issue as "Favorite".


Fwiw im generally ok with this as long as hotkeys are customizable. Apps should behave like apps, and I like having the full array of shortcuts available



Uh... I have no idea what that was, just that the design is completely counter to any attempt to read it.

Which means, probably not a good replacement workflow for a daily driver.




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