Reasons Experts Prefer Using React In 2024

React has quickly become one of the most popular open-source JavaScript libraries for building user interfaces. Leading companies like Facebook, Netflix, Airbnb, and Uber rely on React to power their web and mobile apps.

But what exactly makes React so appealing to develop modern web applications? In this post, we’ll dive into why web development experts use React today and its benefits. If you have decided to use React for your next project, Hire ReactJS Developers from a professional IT development company. If you haven’t, here are some pointers that might make you think otherwise – 

Declarative Views & Components

At its core, React is designed around declarative code to build UI components. Instead of explicitly coding exactly how the UI should change step-by-step in response to data changes, you declare what the UI should look like for any given state. 

React automatically updates the UI quickly and efficiently when the underlying data changes. This makes it much easier to reason about your app as you build a hierarchy of reusable UI components. The declarative model also allows for more maintainable and modular code.

You can focus on describing your app’s data model naturally without worrying about all the underlying DOM updates required to sync the UI with data. The React rendering logic handles that automatically under the hood.

Component-Based Architecture

React centers around reusable, composable components that manage their state. Components receive data through props, use state and props to render UI, and update state in response to user events and interactions. This component architecture provides a separation of concerns and improves code organization. Complex UIs can be broken down into discrete, independent components with clear responsibilities.

Components also make your code more reusable. Common UI elements like buttons, inputs, cards, and models can all be turned into reusable components. These components can then be composed together in different combinations to build complex UIs.

The component model helps your apps stay modular and scalable as they grow. React also makes it easy to share and publish reusable component libraries.

Virtual DOM & High Performance

React uses a virtual DOM to optimize updates and minimize costly DOM operations. When the component state changes, React creates a new virtual DOM tree and intelligently compares it with the previous tree to determine exactly what changed. 

It then selectively updates just those DOM elements that need to change rather than re-rendering the entire UI on each update.

This different process makes React extremely performant. The virtual DOM can re-render and update hundreds of times per second, keeping the UI fast and responsive.

The virtual DOM also batch processes updates to avoid unnecessary re-renders. React will coalesce multiple state updates into a single re-render for efficiency.

These performance optimizations allow React apps to maintain 60+ frames per second rendering and provide a smooth feel even with large, complex UIs.

Easy To Learn

React has a relatively small API surface area, making it easy to learn for most developers. 

The React docs are high quality and provide great guidance for mastering React fundamentals like components, props, state, hooks, lifecycle methods, and more core concepts.

React’s JSX syntax is easy to pick up for developers already familiar with HTML and JavaScript. JSX allows you to write HTML-like syntax directly within JavaScript. Many developers appreciate how React focuses specifically on UI code and does not make assumptions about the rest of your technology stack. This flexibility allows it to integrate seamlessly with various frameworks and libraries. 

The simplicity of React code also makes it easy to reason about and provides a gentle learning curve for most front-end developers getting started.

Huge Ecosystem Of Libraries & Tools

As one of the most popular open-source projects, React has an expansive ecosystem of open-source libraries and tools. For almost any task, there is likely an open-source React component, utility, or tool library that helps developers be more productive.

A few examples include component libraries like MaterialUI, ChakraUI, and BlueprintJS, state management with Redux and MobX, form tools like Formik and React Hook Form, animation libraries like React Spring and Framer Motion, and much more.

The React community has also created amazing developer tools like Create React App to help you quickly launch new projects. Other essential tools include React Developer Tools for debugging, Jest for testing, Storybook for documenting components, and Parcel or Webpack for bundling. No matter the problem area, React’s thriving ecosystem can support your needs.

Scalability

React applications are designed to scale gracefully as your codebase and team grow. Features like a virtual DOM, declarative rendering, and immutable data patterns reduce complexity as UIs get larger. The component model also forces the separation of concerns for more maintainable code at scale.

React is modular with a small runtime that can be optimized via tree-shaking unused features. React apps can be lazily loaded for efficient code splitting for large codebases.

Testing React components also becomes increasingly important at scale. React’s component model lends well to unit testing and snapshot testing with tools like Jest. Leading tech giants like Facebook, Netflix, and Uber rely on React to build complex UIs at massive scales. React’s design and ecosystem set you up for sustainable growth.

Cross-Platform Code Sharing

With React Native, you can share React component code across web, Android, and iOS apps. React Native compiles components written in React to native platform UI elements. This allows you to build native mobile apps using shared React component logic for both platforms.

Sharing core UI code, utilities, and business logic across platforms reduces overall effort and technical debt. Features only need to be written once and are reusable. React can also be used for the web to build mobile websites as Progressive Web Apps that feel highly responsive on mobile devices while offering the same capabilities as native apps. 

The reuse potential between the web, Android, and iOS makes React compelling for teams looking to build excellent experiences across all platforms.

Server-Side Rendering

React can render components to static HTML on the server before sending markup to the client. This addresses some key challenges with traditional client-side-only apps:

• Improves performance for initial page load since the markup is ready immediately. There is no need to wait for JS to download and React to initialize on the client.
• It is better for search engine optimization since crawlers will directly see rendered HTML content. 
• It makes progressive enhancement possible, allowing React to take over after the initial server render.

Frameworks like Next.js make server rendering simple to implement by automatically handling the rendering logic for you. Server-side rendering provides a huge performance boost. It’s great for landing pages where you want content visible quickly.

Long Term Stability With Constant Improvement

React has improved steadily since its release while maintaining stability and backward compatibility. Breaking changes are introduced carefully through deprecation warnings and codemods that help automate migrating legacy code.

Each major React version brings useful additions like hooks in React 16.8 while preserving the core React APIs developers rely on. Facebook maintains React with a clear roadmap focusing on incremental improvements. Their React core team is very responsive to issues and feedback.

This constant evolution while prioritizing stability gives developers confidence that React skills and codebases will remain relevant long-term.

Active Community

As one of the most popular open-source projects, React has cultivated an active global community. There are over 2,000 people contributing code to React on GitHub. StackOverflow has hundreds of thousands of React questions and answers.

Most cities have local React meetup groups that organize events and talks. Major conferences like ReactEurope and ReactConf attract thousands of React developers. Having an engaged community makes learning React enjoyable. You can always find help on forums like Reddit or by following top authors and maintainers on Twitter.

No matter what React question or issue you encounter, an experienced developer has likely encountered it before and can offer guidance.

Corporate Backing From Facebook

Because React was created and is actively maintained by Facebook, it has the full backing of one of the top software engineering teams in the world. Facebook uses React extensively in production across its consumer products. Their commitment ensures the continued improvement and longevity of React itself.

The React team is highly demanding of themselves regarding quality and performance. The dog food Reacted heavily and has a vested interest in its success.

Knowing that thousands of Facebook engineers rely on and support React daily provides confidence that your apps and career skills are in good hands.

Trusted By Tech Giants

In addition to Facebook’s usage, React has been successfully adopted by many other tech titans:

• Netflix relies on React for critical customer-facing interfaces across its platform, from the homepage to the video player.
• Airbnb migrated their most trafficked pages, like search, listing, and booking, to React, resulting in major performance wins.
• Uber utilizes React Native to build their iOS and Android apps using shared component logic.
•  Instagram, owned by Facebook, built its entire web UI in React, including deep linking and accessibility features.
• Khan Academy uses React to build its online learning platform, serving over 100 million registered students.

Seeing how the top companies deliver amazing user experiences with React validates it as a trusted solution for the most demanding use cases.

Full-Stack Friendly

While React focuses on UI code, it integrates very nicely with the V (View) in an MVC architecture. React does not dictate how the rest of your stack should be built.

You can pair React with traditional server-side frameworks like Ruby on Rails, ASP.NET, Node/Express, Laravel, Django, and more.

You can use a simple local component state, external libraries like Redux, or custom state management solutions to manage the state.

This agnostic approach makes React a great choice for teams that want a powerful view layer while retaining flexibility across the rest of their technology stack. React plays well with any backend and can be incrementally adopted.

Speeds Up Development Velocity 

By empowering developers to build declarative UIs faster, React meaningfully improves development velocity and efficiency. Features like a virtual DOM, one-way data flow, and reusable components help developers be more productive. The declarative programming model makes reasoning about app behavior much simpler.

Developers struggle less with DOM manipulation and can focus on business logic. Components also enforce the separation of concerns for cleaner code and UIs.

The extensive React ecosystem also prevents engineers from reinventing the wheel. Sharing common solutions drives faster development across teams. React has enabled developers to ship new features faster without compromising quality for many companies. The result is happy customers and engineering teams. 

Popular With Developers

React is clearly among the most beloved web frameworks among developers today. StackOverflow surveys consistently rank React as one of the most popular and in-demand frameworks year over year. Job postings for React developers have grown rapidly.

Most developers who learn React enjoy working with it and appreciate the elegant API design. React concepts like declarative views, component composition, and unidirectional data flow make sense. Developers praise how React empowers them to build scalable UIs fast without frustration. The thriving of React today is a testament to its developer experience and craftsmanship.

While subjective, the overwhelmingly positive sentiment towards React across the industry is a strong reason to use it. Happy developers build great apps.

Final Words

React emerged originally to meet Facebook’s needs but has evolved into an invaluable tool for UI development more broadly. Its component architecture, declarative programming model, virtual DOM, and focus on developer experience explain why React has become a top choice for building modern web applications. If you want to leverage the benefits of React, hire dedicated developers from a trusted React Development Company who have experience in delivering highly performant React solutions. 

In 2024 and beyond, React shows no signs of slowing down. If you’re looking for a reliable, scalable, and enjoyable framework to build UIs with, React remains a phenomenal choice valued by experts across the industry.

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