With hooks, we traded verbosity for a single interface that does it all (assuming you know how to hook up your dependencies correctly, or compose helper hooks to manage state comparisons). Hooks allow you to do mostly anything lifecycle methods did, but they're a lot trickier to reason with, review, and develop.

This all goes away if all your developers are functional maestros - in practice, it's lead to buggier code across our various frontends.

Unfortunately we live in a diverse landscape of browsers and devices, many of which have not been updated in quite some time. Factors ranging from IT policy at older companies, to geographical limitations, may prevent many users from upgrading to the latest and greatest.

Some companies choose to cut their losses, and support only certain browsers - these can get away with less compilation and polyfills. Other companies may be targeting these specific segments (such as B2B), and can't get away with such a luxury.

Many engineering organizations don't have full documentation on institutional knowledge, and many things travel by word of mouth.

It's helpful to have some sort of comparison, even if they're imperfect or highly subjective (as historical observations often are). With a more cynical take, we can perhaps call it analytical clickbait.

"Even if a user has Like Counts enabled, they will not be able to see the number of likes on accounts or posts that have hidden them."

Users will be forced into a new dilemma: Enable likes and accept the 'social media pressure', or announce to everyone that they harbor some sort of insecurity about their social media status by turning them off.

By the time a manager gets promoted, they often have enough context to functional well at that level. They may have built a network within their organization, have seen the product or technology go through several iterations, and developed a good understanding of how their team members work. In turn, this makes them a better manager.

New managers have to work hard to gain these skills, and incur great cost in doing so.

While there are good arguments against A/B testing UI changes and doing p-hacking, much of the modern web's current UX and UI improvements are in part due to this. How else would we truly know what affects user on a broad scale?

It's often a useful exercise to dig into the root cause - a lot of times the problem you're seeing is just the tip of the iceberg.

For me, getting from 20% to 15% body fat was straightforward, and took 3 months. I figured 15% to 10% was achievable in a similar timeframe, but it ended up taking twice as long, even with careful dieting and exercise. I would imagine 10% to 8% or 7% is even more difficult to achieve (and maintain).

Fitness is strange - everyone's bodies are different, so your mileage may vary. Although I do believe the concept of diminishing returns plays out in a general manner. Good luck on your goals!

These managed solutions can provide value for large companies, especially ones that fall into a DIY trap.