The rise of React made it clear that (reusable) components are an effective way of building a large web site (or web application) in a scalable way. Nanoc has support for partials, but they’re not a good alternative:

• Partials are syntax-heavy (<%= render '/stuff', … %>, compared to React’s <Stuff />).

• In Nanoc, Partials exist as layouts, which is confusing.

• The implementation of partials depends on Nanoc internals, despite being implemented as a helper (while helpers usually only rely on Nanoc’s public API).