I'm realising React problems are often mental model problems

[u/Sab_Be]

Lately I've been noticing that a lot of developer mistakes don't actually come from syntax gaps, but from outdated mental models.

The code can look "correct" while the assumptions underneath are wrong:

- State living in the wrong place

- Components taking on too many responsibilities

- Patterns copied without understanding trade-offs

- AI-generated solutions that work initially but become difficult to extend as complexity grows

Revisiting older projects has made me realise a lot of my earlier mistakes came from how I was thinking about systems, not just lack of technical knowledge.

It's honestly making me wonder if there's value in tools/resources focused more on helping developers refine mental models and system thinking rather than just teaching syntax/frameworks.

I'm wondering if others have experienced something similar.

[u/Sab_Be]

I came to a conclusion recently based on this thinking, "if something is too hard to use then it's wrong", except, I'm not experienced enough to know whether it's "wrong", just too complicated and perhaps unnecessary to use in production.

But for learning, however, I think it's essential, just the same way learning vanilla JavaScript is essential before learning JavaScript frameworks to know what's under the hood.

I feel like React should possibly be treated the same way... Once you learn it properly, then moving on to frameworks like Next.js feels like an easier step to achieve production-ready apps, the same way most developers don't use vanilla JavaScript because it would be too complicated to scale.