Are you giving the proper sense to React.Fragment?

The title is clickbait and React.Fragment (<></>) has very valid use cases. The example you showed technically doesn't need to return a fragment—you can just do return !isEmpty && (...). Or just return null if it's empty, depending on what your preference is.

There are other valid use cases for fragments, too, like if you need to return two siblings but without introducing unnecessary wrapper parents.

Your final code reads very well, that’s to be commended.

I don’t agree that the solution to every React problem is more components, though. Writing a ListManager component seems like massive overkill and poor naming: what you're describing is more like a ListItemManager - and what is a ListItemManager if not, well, a List?

Naming an empty list is great, but you don’t need a component for that either! You could do just as well by interpolating a const instead, saving yourself a function call:

function List(props) {  
  const items = props.items;
  const emptyList = <React.Fragment />;
  const hasItems = items && items.length > 0;

  return hasItems
  ?  <ul>{ items.map(i => <li key={i}>{i}</li>) }</ul>
  : emptyList
  ;
}

React is awesome, but moar components aren’t always the answer.

IMO:
If your gonna return an empty fragment you might as well return null.
And if your goal is readability, you can always use multiple return like this

function List(props) {  
  const items = props.items;

  // check if items is not empty
  const isEmpty = !(items && items.length > 0);

   if(isEmpty) return null

  return(
      <ul>
        { items.map(i => <li key={i}>{i}</li>) }
      </ul>
      );
}

I much prefer this version:

return items && 
        <ul>
        { items.map(i => <li key={i}>{i}</li>) }
      </ul>;

• The logic is inlined so you don't have to jump between component when reading the code.

• You won't have ever new dev on your team asking you why you are returning and empty fragment.

The final example looks more "clean", but what actually happens is that you have to jump around in the file a lot to understand what is happening.

I wish one day I'd be able to express my, points in such linear and organized way!
Good read! definitely scales me up!

Fragments were introduced as a workaround to JSX not supporting unwrapped sibling elements.

Professional programmers should probably start by reading the docs.

I'm confused 🤔
Do you mean to say you're a coder but don't do it professionally?
Like, if you were a professional programmer you wouldn't have returned a fragment (since they don't do that sort of thing) but would have just returned null and been done with it?

Anyway, I totally agree that to be effective as a coder you need to have all the tools in the toolkit at your disposal, and know the situations where they're useful.

To me, fragments' domain of usefulness is for encapsulating multiple elements, or unknown numbers of elements, as one return value. If I'm returning zero elements, I'll return null since that is what null means: a typed but missing value.

Fragment is very useful when you need to have a parent that does not need to render a container but need to render its children.
From example the Context Provider, component from react-router-dom.

I'm so confused. The title of the article says professionals never return "React.Fragment" but by the end of the article you have a component (EmptyList) that returns "React.Fragment" Does this mean you're not a professional?

In your first edit you have a comment to point out the added complexity, but the final edit has a ton of needless complexity, but is missing that comment.

Returning null for an empty list is perfectly testable, acceptable, and most importantly, simple. All things being equal, I'll opt for simplicity.

Totally agree with the requirements specification and domain model comments. My intention in this article is to show an example of how framework features have to be adapted to our solution and not in the opposite.