Why React Should Be Your First Choice ?

Shifat Jaman
The Startup
Published in
7 min readJun 23, 2019

Now a day’s web technology advancing continuously and gradually. It is quite difficult to focus on a single platform for the developers to work with, due to the massive options of the framework. However, only a few numbers of frameworks prove themselves as a handful and developer friendly option to choose. React is not only one of them, but also becoming a powerful front-end applications platform gradually.

According to the www.hntrends.com website, React arrives at the first position for the last two year in the most demanding JavaScript developer’s trend. In this post, we will know about the reasons which make React so demanding.

https://www.hntrends.com/2018/jun-no-signs-of-slowing-for-react.html?compare1=React&compare2=AngularJS&compare3=Angular+2&compare4=Vue

What is React?

React is JavaScript based on an open source framework which is developed by Facebook. It was first released by Facebook in 2013.After releasing several versions the latest version of React (v16.9.0-alpha.0) released on 3rd April 2019.

It is considered to be a JavaScript library rather than a framework. This is the potential strength of React. It is fast,simple and best choice for building user interfaces. However, where Angular is mainly dependent on typescript, React is an HTML dependent JavaScript library to choose. Massive companies like Facebook, Netflix, Instagram are now using React. These undoubtedly shows the acceptance as well as the popularity of it.

Website react.org

Photo by Émile Perron on Unsplash

Uses of React and Its Popularity

At the beginning of the frameworks era, developers were forced to do a lot of code. They badly needed a complete solution of a framework that can break down complex components as well as code reusing facility.

After that, Facebook came with the solution. They introduced React to the solution that developers were looking for. It uses JSX with the feature of HTML dependent JavaScript libraries to choose. This offers machine-readable codes and at the same time compounding components into a single-time verifiable file.

With simplicity and workability, React increases its popularity. More than 1,300 developers and over 94,000 sites utilize React.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

What are the React Features?

JSX

React uses JSX by ignoring the regular JavaScript format. JSX is also a JavaScript form which allows HTML quoting as well as HTML tag syntax for making a template. This can also allow coding in pure old JavaScript.

React Native

In 2015, Facebook declared the native libraries for React. It is an open source React framework enabling developers to use React along with native platform capabilities. This is mainly for native applications like IOS, Android, and UPD.

One-Way Data Flow

React provide one-way data binding. Thus, It just renders a downward data flow. In this type of structure, child elements cannot affect the parent data at all. By doing, just state modification of those objects developers can easily change or update anything as per their need.

Virtual Document Object Model

Virtual DOM is a great issue in terms of performance. React creates an in-memory data structure cache which computes the changes made and then updates the browser which enables the programmer to code as if the whole page is rendered on each change.

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

Why Choosing React Simplifies Developers Work?

Focused on User Interface

React is mainly focused on user interface compared to the other frameworks. It provides a highly responsive user interface with the help of JavaScript and the native platform capabilities. This ensures the fastest user satisfaction as well as application load time.

Advanced Efficiency

React has its own DOM (Document Object Model) to store the app components. DOM actually allows the developers what changes and updates do they need in components. This practice allows time-consuming operations and manages them in an efficient manner.

Reusability of React Components

React offers code reusability facility at any time. This encourages the developers to choose to React. It saves time as well as reduce the burden of the developers. Thus reusability brings efficiency for the developers.

Simple Framework

React use traditional JavaScript structure which makes it a simple and understandable compared to other front-end frameworks. It provides component-based approaches that make numerous operations a lot easier. Anyone who has basic programming knowledge can easily understand React because of JSX and HTML.

The JavaScript Library

As I told before that React is considered to be a JavaScript library rather than a framework. The JSX syntax and HTML makes the writing components for the websites a lot easier. Native APIs performs a huge role as React makes proper use of them which allows JavaScript stack to work across platforms.

Works Perfect with SEO

React works perfect with SEO as the major drawback of many JavaScript frameworks is that they do not search engine friendly. You can run React on the server and the virtual DOM will be rendered to the browser as a regular web page, having no need for any other practices.

Easy to Learn

Compared to other front-end frameworks, React is quite easy to learn. React requires good JavaScript knowledge, as it is not a complete framework that’s the reason you need to take a lot of decisions regarding third-party libraries. You have got numerous solution regarding React issues in Stack Overflow also React has a vast developer community. React also provides a getting started guide at the beginning of set up.

Photo by Dietmar Becker on Unsplash

A Comparison of React to Other Popular Frameworks

Runtime Performance

In the matter of speed, the first two names have come in front is React and Vue. For every component change, React ensure a re-render is activated for the component subtree. You can use Pure Component instead of re-rendering. In Vue, components are activated automatically during rendering. Vue has a well-built structure which ensures a great performance and memory allocation.

HTML and CSS Application

React is a form of JavaScript. JSX contains HTML structure and the latest trendy CSS management inside JavaScript. Everything in React is JS. Every HTML structure is expressed through JSX while the latest trends add CSS management inside JS as well. However, Vue allows old functioned JavaScript to build a site or application.

The Learning Step

You have to know JavaScript in order to work with any JavaScript frameworks. React is not a complete framework, hence, you need a vast knowledge about JavaScript. On the other hand Angular, required TypeScript and Vue allow old JavaScript coding. Comparing these three Vue is much easier to learn with a short time. If you have previous experience than React is the best choice for you. Angular is much more difficult for the newcomer.

Popularity of React

Here I provide some trend and survey result of React, Angular and Vue. In every case React is the ultimate winner accept one. This proves the huge popularity of React comparing to the other.

Google Trends

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?cat=31&q=Vue.js,React,Angular

Npm Trends

https://www.npmtrends.com/angular-vs-react-vs-vue

Stateofjs.com 2018 Survey

https://2018.stateofjs.com/front-end-frameworks/overview/

StackOverflow Trend

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends
Photo by Evan Dennis on Unsplash

The Future of React

Facebook and the entire React team are determined to continue and increase the efficiency as well as work-ability of React in the future. Although it is not easy to last in this crucial fast emerging competitive market. Here some of the things we expect in future releases of React may include,

  • A new render type may include in React. The React team working on a unique fragment syntax which does not require any key.
  • Almost every developer are expecting a better way of handling the error. Run time error during rendering always causes a problem for the developer in the past. As a result page, refreshing is the only solution that the developer has. This requires regular page refreshing.
  • Some improvement may occur in enhancing server-side rendering issue. Although the latest React server-side rendering it very fast and ideal for streaming.
Photo by Jack Sloop on Unsplash

Who are the Users of React?

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Netflix
  • New York Times
  • Yahoo! Mail
  • Khan Academy
  • WhatsApp
  • Vivaldi Browser
  • Codecademy
  • Dropbox
Photo by Romain V on Unsplash

Conclusion

React has several reasons why it is suitable for enterprise organizations. Considering the speed, simplicity, as well as flexibility, React is very popular to the developer’s community. Many organizations have already turned into React for its competitive advantages, and many more will surely join them in the near future.

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