Why Choose React for Your App

 

In the last few years, React has emerged as the leading tool to build modern and interactive applications for browsers, smartphones, and even desktop computers. React wasn't always the dominant force it is today, so we need to understand the reasons behind the rise of React and what makes it so special to warrant all this attention. 

This guide will also act as a list of reasons for why you should consider using (or switching to) React for the upcoming projects.

Versatility and Cross-Platform Development

React started out as a tool for web development, but its capabilities quickly expanded to native smartphone and desktop app development. React Native allows you to use familiar and friendly React syntax to build apps for two most popular operating systems on smartphones - iOS and Android. Electron is another framework that, in turn, facilitates the development of desktop applications. 

Thus by learning React, software developers essentially gain the ability to code applications for all types of popular devices used today. Not to mention the ability to create Progressive Web Applications, which can save a lot of time and effort on building separate smartphone and web apps for your business. 

Ultimately, this versatility is one of React's greatest advantages, and one that makes React a perfect pick for cross-platform development.

React's Popularity and Community Support

One of the reasons for why you should choose React is its popularity. It's not a requirement for a web dev technology to be popular, but it certainly helps. React is by far the most popular library (not a full framework) for building dynamic web applications. Large community is beneficial in case you get stuck on a bug, or otherwise need help to navigate difficulties of using the library.

Larger community of developers also means that there are more supporting packages and libraries developed for React. For example, react-select to build beautiful dropdowns. 

Component-Based Architecture

Reusable components are one of the core features of the library. Thanks to component reusability, development of React apps is seamless and fast. Expert developers can also create components that are easy to reuse and much less prone to bugs.

Ideally, components should be independent, but also composable. So you can mix and match components to achieve the desired UI. React web applications are nothing but component trees made up of reusable bits. Component-based design means that React apps are more consistent and easier to maintain.

Testing and identifying bugs is easier too, and if components are designed well, the error is usually limited to one component. So a React developer can go to specific component and fix it, without having to track errors throughout the app. Every component has its own UI, internal state, and interface (props) it uses to communicate with other elements. This is a predictable design and makes React web applications very easy to develop and maintain. 

Interactive User Interfaces

React is by far the best tool for building dynamic user interfaces. Developers can start small by building smaller parts (and features) of interfaces. Then combine them to get a fully functioning web application.

Performance and Virtual DOM

Virtual DOM is one of the innovations of React that makes this library very fast and efficient. React essentially maintains a shadow image of the real DOM, which is much smaller in size and easier to update. Changing components' state or props re-renders them (and all their children components). Thanks to virtual DOM, this is a very efficient operation. Under the hood, React reflects changes to the Virtual DOM to the real DOM.

React clearly separates side effects like loading external data from virtual DOM and rendering. In class components you can use lifecycle methods like componentDidMount. useeffect empty dependency array does the same in functional components.

Stable Front-End Framework

React was created by Facebook, and social media giant still continues to use the library. So you can be sure that React is as stable as it can be and constantly improved. 

React Hooks

Hooks are a new addition to React, but made the library much simpler and easier to write. The ability to use state in functional components was one big change, but hooks generally provide easy solutions for routing and many other front-end features.

SEO Friendly

Thanks to latest updates (specifically, React v18) the library now supports server-side components. Rendering components on the server is much more SEO-friendly, since it gives Google and other search engine bots something to index.

React is also thoroughly integrated with Next, a tool that allows you to build full stack web applications with some JavaScript knowledge. Some developers choose to integrate React with SSGs as well (static site generators). In general, React is a part of the ecosystem of user-friendly and SEO-friendly tools, packages, and frameworks for the front-end.

Testability

One of the best features of React is its testability. Thanks to component-based nature of the library, testing web applications is very easy. You simply need to identify component that contains the error, and work within the simplicity of that component to fix it. Virtual DOM simplifies the entire process as well.

There are several libraries for doing unit testing in React. Jest is currently the most popular, and the library you want to learn if you're serious about starting a career in the field of React.

Rich Ecosystem

React library alone does one thing - interactive UI design and development - very well. It is, however, limited in other regards, such as routing. However, thanks to its large community, there are several excellent supporting libraries to implement features that are initially missing from React. Libraries like MobX and Redux are very useful for state management. Libraries like Material UI provide ready-to-use components with powerful functionalities, so you can drive development time to a minimum.

Controlled inputs for consistency

React has many built-in event handlers, and an entire set of features to securely and consistently handle user inputs. An input is controlled when its value is stored in the state. And changes to the input UI element trigger updates of the state. Look at this react input onchange example to better understand the concept of controlled inputs. 

 Summary

In summary, React has a number of advantages for building interactive apps for different devices. Most important are the versatility, easy development process, simple learning curve and a large community of developers.