Right now, React JS is the most popular JavaScript-based frontend library that helps developers build interactive and innovative UI faster. React’s popularity can be measured by its capability to power major tech-giant websites.
Many fortune 500 companies and globally-dominating organisations like Netflix, Facebook, Instagram, Airbnb, etc., leverage React JS’ state-of-the-art features to build a robust website and mobile app’s UI.
However, if you are still asking why you should use React JS to offer custom web development services, below in the article, we have given some reasons to prove the greatness and usability of React JS. But first, let’s introduce the library.
What is React JS?
React JS is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces for websites and mobile apps. React was developed in 2011 by Facebook. The social media platform constructed the library for its use. However, they made it open source in May 2013.
React JS became popular as many companies started using the library in their software production environments. Today React is revered by many companies, including fortune 500 like Airbnb, Netflix, Instagram, and more. In addition, the subtle easiness and incredible features make the library ideal for creating robust user interfaces.
It allows developers to create large web applications that can modify data without page reload. The primary intent of React is to be speedy, scalable, and straightforward. And this makes it the most suitable tool for creating feature-rich UI.
Reasons for using React JS
React JS is the most chosen technology for creating innovative, scalable, and robust UI for web and apps. The library powers many well-known websites like Netflix, Facebook, and Instagram. So, knowing what aspects of React JS made them use this relatively new tool is vital.
Easy-to-use
One of the greatest benefits of React JS is that it has a lower learning curve. It is a JavaScript-based library. So anyone with a little knowledge of JavaScript can easily get started with the technology and get hands-on experience within a week. In addition, react components and concepts are really simple to figure out.
React has extensive and well-structured documentation, which helps developers learn the library quickly. However, for beginners learning React might be a little hard. To start with React, you should know various programming concepts, JavaScript, HTML, and other frontend technologies. Moreover, if you are switching from another framework, you might have difficulty understanding React JS’s unique functionalities
Flexibility
React JS is pretty flexible, and once you master it, you can use this technology to build robust user interfaces for various platforms. This is because the technology was built to create components for web applications. These components can be anything from buttons to text and labels to grids.
But with React’s popularity, its ecosystem grew too. For example, you can now create static websites using Gatsby or build cross-platform mobile or desktop applications. Moreover, you can also use React JS in your existing app or leverage server rendering of the library’s tools using tools like Next.js.
Component reusability
In web development, React JS is mostly used to create separate components, which can be reused repeatedly. Once you create a web application element in React JS, you get a unique object, which you can use in any project compatible with React JS.
While a bigger and more general hierarchy is built out of the components by wrapping them into higher-level components, each component has unique logic and rendering principles. This helps developers offer custom web development services with scalability, achieve better web app consistency, and make further support and optimization a seamless job.
Performance
React makes a virtual representation of DOM and keeps it in memory. This allows React JS to reflect all the changes easily in the virtual DOM. Virtual DOM is one of the significant features of React JS, which makes it apart from its competitors. In addition, virtual DOM allows React to offer remarkably faster-rendering capacities.
A specialized algorithm compares the state of Virtual DOM with the former one. This calculates the most efficient way to make changes without loading the page too much. Then, a minimum number of updates are introduced to carry out the fastest read/write operations in minimal time, resulting in an overall performance boost.
Community support
React JS has a massive active community across various forums and websites. For example, reflux is an entire forum dedicated to React JS where developers chat, share their problems, and help each other. Moreover, Stack overflow is the most popular forum, with more than 250k questions about React JS and its library.
This active community regularly updates to React JS open source, so often, you don’t have to create any components as chances are you can find them built by these contributors. Moreover, Facebook also has a dedicated react team, which regularly publishes blog posts giving details of each update.
Extensive toolset
React JS has an outstanding toolset tech stack. This allows developers to offer comprehensive development services speedily. In addition, react Development Tools, and Redux Development Tools offers extremely convenient capabilities, which you can easily install and use as regular Chrome extensions. These tools aid various objectives, from simple single-page to extensive eCommerce web development services.
Mainly, using these tools, you can efficiently inspect React-based hierarchy components, check dispatch actions, and view state changes on the go in the extension. And what is more, this can also be recorded and used as a backup for debugging purposes in future.
Flux and Redux
Another special reason why React JS is popular in web development is because of its Flux and Redux capacities. Facebook introduced the Flux-based architecture, which enhanced standard React components with the unidirectional data flow, offering a more optimal action structure.
However, Flux can only be used in the front end for UI design workflow and can’t be used as a full-on library. That’s where Redux comes into play as a timely Flux implementation. It offers a single store object to handle all app data, making underlying data management manipulations effortless.
JSX for extended HTML
React JS allows you to directly use the declarative HTML syntax in the JavaScript code. First, the browser decodes HTML text to display the user interface on the client’s device. Next, it creates DOM trees, which can be modified using JavaScript to build interactive user interfaces.
DOM manipulation is more efficient with JSX. Developers can create clean, modifiable code by passing HTML and React JS components into the browser’s DOM tree structures. Moreover, JSX and Virtual DOM are why React JS applications perform faster and more efficiently.
As the library has a vast ecosystem and aids in widespread objectives, React JS is currently swaying the tech world. Businesses particularly are seemingly more inclined towards React JS. The library is also a part of the MERN stack. And so, harnessing its power with Node JS, a JavaScript-based backend technology, you can create immensely robust applications.
Hiring a MERN stack developer will allow you to leverage comprehensive knowledge of the tech stack. However, you can also hire a React JS programmer and a Node JS programmer separately. A comprehensive approach will allow you to leverage the complete power of JavaScript to build robust applications.
Which is more suitable: hiring a MERN stack developer or React and Node Developer?
This depends on your project requirements. Hiring MERN stack developers could be expensive. So if your project needs to use the entire MERN stack, which is MongoDB, Express JS, React, and Node, you should only choose the former option. Otherwise, hire Node JS and React JS developers to build a complete JavaScript-based app.
What Is React JS? Why Should You Use It?
React JS is one of the most sought-after technologies for frontend development. But why is it so? We have answered this question in the post below. Click to read.