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React 19 Broke Update Stability, Keeping Half of Developers Stuck
Although React’s two-stage safe update strategy should have prevented this, many developers are stuck in React 17 compatibility
Until recently, React could brag of more than successful updates. Each time it released a new version, the entire ecosystem quickly updated. In contrast, other frameworks like Angular or Vue fragmented their users across various versions. That was the past. Today this has been broken with React 19. What happened?
Discovering Stability
In a series of talks, I brought up that a critical characteristic for achieving stability in development is to choose a stable tech stack that is easy to update.
Over time, dependencies can become outdated, risking development slowdown. Bugs or security flaws can accumulate forcing new updates. Or, looking on the bright side, new versions can incorporate new functionalities that save us a lot of time and unintended bugs. However, all of this requires updating, and the update needs to be easy to do — otherwise, the responsible team will set it aside, bundle it with other maintenance tasks, and fall behind.
