I've been developing some games and frontend on my free time for fun. I've been using typescript and Pixi.js but other than that nothing else. As a backend engineer, I've always thought about learning a frontend framework but I've never actually had a strong need of it.

So question if you're a frontend engineer: Should I? I never felt the need of a framework despite I render quite a bit of dom elements. Do I have a need that I just don't know right now?

If you want to get a job as a frontend engineer, you should learn React because it's a tick-box on a lot of job postings these days.

If you just want to make personal projects, it depends a lot on what kinds of projects you want to make. React won't really help you with the sort of 2D-game-type programming you're using Pixi.js for. On the other hand, if you think the Reddit redesign is really good and you want to make a website that works exactly like that, the React community is a good place to start.

But one of the main benefits of using React that I've heard about is that it forces all the members of a development team to organize (certain parts of) their code the same way. This isn't really an issue on personal projects. Personally, I spent about a year working with React for a job, but I continue to write vanilla JavaScript on my own time.

(You can learn other frameworks than React, but React is a good starting point because it's the most popular one. Then you can learn about Framework X by reading "how is Framework X different from React" articles online.)

> if you think the Reddit redesign is really good

Conversely, if I think the reddit redesign is horrible, I guess I should stay well away? ;)

Thanks for your detailed answer. I got my answer right where you said 'if you think the reddit redesign is really good'.

Which it's not.

If you have a multiple team-members and you need to get everyone using a common approach, frameworks can be useful. If you need to do small unit's of work and need to leverage boilerplate functions, frameworks can be useful.

The issue I see today is many of these frameworks started as ways to build efficiency; they have degraded into disciplines that require exorbitant investment without corresponding business value.

I never felt like I needed one but recently I’ve found that when writing larger apps, React is really worth it

Yep, you're right. We immediately have to make a version that is made with at least two frameworks at once here!!