from Hacker News

Wake Up, Remix

by dimitrisnl on 5/28/25, 2:23 PM with 18 comments

  • by zIndex9999 on 5/28/25, 4:39 PM

    Remix v3 isn’t just a new direction, it’s a full reboot. They’ve scrapped React, forked Preact, teased their own UI library, and are positioning themselves as a zero-dependency, fully self-owned framework. It’s not evolution, it’s erasure.

    Let’s not forget how Remix got here. It gained traction primarily by merging into the React Router repo, inheriting 11M dependents and a decade of credibility it didn’t earn. From there, it became a thin abstraction over React Router before going dark entirely with the now-famous “taking a nap” announcement.

    Now it’s back. Not with stability, not with iteration, but with a declaration, “We’re doing our own thing.” No React. No compatibility. A fresh stack, built from scratch.

    Why? That’s the real question.

    Shopify reportedly acquired Remix for ~$40M. Maybe this is them pushing for something big and new to justify the investment. Or maybe it’s the founders wanting full-stack ownership and long-term lock-in. Or maybe, with the pressure off post-acquisition, this is just Rich People™ messing around with legacy projects instead of supporting their users.

    The leaked version of this pivot was even more aggressive, it openly criticized React and dubbed the shift a “Declaration of Independence.” The blog post toned that down, but the core direction hasn’t changed. It’s still a move away from the ecosystem that gave them a user base, toward something inward-looking and self-defined.

    They claim to still be maintaining React Router. But it’s the same team now split across two projects. That means both will slow down. One is legacy support mode, the other is vaporware until proven otherwise.

    Meanwhile, others in the space are embracing the now. They’re solving the hard problems of 2025 head-on. They’re building with the current stack, improving developer experience, shipping usable features, and making the future better, not by erasing the past, but by working with it.

    This isn’t thoughtful evolution, it’s a hard reset with unclear motives, launched by a team with less to lose than their users.

    Trust is easy to lose in devtools. This is how you lose it.

  • by medhir on 5/28/25, 8:35 PM

    so was considering doing a rewrite of a Next project to Remix.

    but then, as I look into it, Remix is now actually React Router v7. that seemed odd, even though I knew the author was the same I was always under the impression that these are distinct projects.

    but fine, perhaps the evolution of both has converged. I got too confused to invest time in the rewrite. now, seems like Remix is being rebooted?

    all these changes over the years seem well intentioned, but it takes away confidence in investing time in these solutions. If the justification to rebrand completely to React Router was that there are no serious functional differences between it and Remix, having a hard time understanding why Remix is now in the picture again.

  • by dimitrisnl on 5/28/25, 2:24 PM

    The original title is `Wake up, Remix!` with an exclamation mark. Now it reads more like "Come on now Remix.."
  • by nadis on 5/28/25, 5:21 PM

    "To do that, we need to own the full stack — without leaning on layers of abstraction we don't control. That means no critical dependencies, not even React. We're starting with a fork of Preact, a mature virtual DOM library already used heavily at Shopify, Google, and countless others."

    I really wish there were more details around why they chose to start with a fork of Preact beyond just this sentence. Sort of a surprising decision to me.

  • by dzonga on 5/29/25, 8:29 AM

    the react router / remix shenanigans is why I stepped away from react and went to vue with it's more coherent ecosystem. one day react router changes - next it's nextjs - you can never keep up. with vue you changes only have been composition api & pinia but you can still use the old api's. vue-router hasn't exactly changed.
  • by kelnos on 5/29/25, 2:55 AM

    Soooo... I just started a new project using React Router v7 a couple months ago... how much should I be worried that RR is gonna be poorly maintained from here on out?
  • by insin on 5/28/25, 11:46 PM

    Weird first principle, but have been using Preact + htm for my own no-build stuff recently, so looking forward to what Ryan and Michael are cooking.
  • by tefkah on 5/28/25, 8:32 PM

    > This isn't just a new version — it's a new direction. One that's faster, simpler, and closer to the web itself.

    people really just be raw posting whatever chatgpt spits out huh

  • by sakesun on 5/30/25, 4:10 PM

    Let's call it Premix