React's State Management: A Symphony of Self-Inflicted Wounds | ThirdArm.to

The Great State Management Catastrophe

React didn't solve state management. It just gave us 14 new ways to be wrong with confidence. Every time I see a component that uses useState, useContext, and useReducer in the same file, I want to scream into the void.

The Horror Show of Options

• Context API: A global state solution that turns your app into a spaghetti bowl of dependencies
• Redux: A 2015-era solution that still demands 30 lines of boilerplate for a simple counter
• MobX: A "reactive" framework that turns your code into a black box of side effects
• Zustand: A "simple" library that adds 2 more hooks to your already broken architecture

The Unforgivable Sin

React's greatest crime isn't the existence of these tools - it's the illusion that any of them are "solutions." They're just different flavors of the same problem: a framework that refuses to take responsibility for its own abstractions.