In all fairness it's been around for quite some time.
Moreover, the abundance of frameworks is not inherently a bad thing in my opinion. You don't need to learn it if it doesn't solve a problem for you after all.
I'm not agreeing with the GP's attitude about more frameworks. In fact, I really enjoy working with Phoenix and am glad the author(s) put in the hard work to build it.
But
> You don't need to learn it if it doesn't solve a problem for you after all
is not true. I don't like React and I have to use it at work because that is what was chosen.
React is nigh-universally agreed to solve a set of problems related to frontend web development. You may not recognize the pain of those problems and it may not solve them the way you like it, but the way you've attacked the sentence is really strange.
What if you could eliminate a lot of the pain points that React solves but without having to write much (if any) Javascript but still have an application that feels like it's rendered client side while getting server side rendered templates for free, and things like "but I can share my logic between the backend and frontend" goes away because the backend can do both?
This is just one type of problem that Phoenix's LiveView solves and LiveView is only a small aspect of what Phoenix has available. I'm very thankful work is being done in this area instead of just accepting that everyone wants to use React.
Whether or not you like React, the point is that it's solving a problem. Maybe not for you, but (I'd like to believe) at the very least for some of your colleagues.
True that whether I like it or not doesn't matter in a business and team sense. I should have phrased my comment better.
I don't believe it is solving a problem. It's creating unnecessary complexity. The app is just a typical CRUD app. Traditional server side rendering would be fine in my opinion. Or perhaps coupled with LiveView or TurboLinks, and Stimulus.js.
Btw, this is not so much a knock on React specifically, but on the overuse of the SPA paradigm [1]
So in conclusion, using React in this case (in my opinion) doesn't solve a problem and yet I need to use it.
It's comical how the FA jumps right in assuming you know what it is, what it's for, and why you should care about the first two -- comical in a good way, for those of us who are happier not knowing.
I have a vague impression that Elixir has something to do with Erlang, and that is all I need to know, but that Phoenix has something to do with Elixir also wasn't mentioned right away.