10 Reasons Why Developers Need ReactJS
Reading Time: 4 minutes There is so much hype around ReactJS development lately, that it is literally impossible for a developer to stay aside from it. Therefore, we’ve compiled the list of 10 incentives for adoption of ReactJS. So you decide either it is worth your time or not.
1. Free and Open-Source
Despite ReactJS is a product of Facebook, it is completely open-source and, therefore, free. It’s on a 5th position with 75.000 stars and over 14 thousand branches in JS category.
Such popularity provides enormous benefits. Frequent updates, constantly emerging new tools and libraries are at your disposal from day 1. Afterwards, you can count on support from an enormous community. Or even contribute yourself and benefit!
Benefit how? Well, Facebook hasn’t forsaken its child. Quite the contrary – they catch all the trends and implement best features into their products and, of course, new releases of ReactJS itself. Redux might be a great example here. So, you have a good chance to see your name in the next release note.
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2. Easy to adapt and pleasant to work with
React is a library, not a comprehensive framework. Even more, it is brilliantly segmented. So you can start with just a few exact libraries you need, without even touching the other. Given you are proficient at JS – you can start with ReactJS within a few hours, after going through the necessary documentation.
Also, ReactJS tends to be the most time-saving and convenient tool/library for JS. All thanks to its tools and plugins. Let’s take as an example the Chrome extension, which allows live reloading.
Whenever you make some changes in CSS or components, the page will update in real-time itself.
3. Virtual DOM
That’s where ReactJS shines with its performance. ReactJS uses an abstract copy of DOM – Virtual DOM. It works through minimizing DOM interactions by batching updates and using a virtual memory DOM to calculate differences and immutable state. Moreover, developers aren’t obliged to bind DOM with functionality in the front-end, as elements are already connected to it.
React is able to regenerate the full HTML of the web app as the state from a single source change. That’s all thanks to one-way data-binding.
4. JSX
In ReactJS HTML and JS application code is in one pile, and keeping those in separate files was an unnecessary separation of technologies. It’s like you’re trying to change id tags or class names of HTML elements in a huge jQuery app. You’d need to ensure that none of your DOM bindings were destroyed.
JSX helps is such cases by putting your component logic into the same file as the view it is operating on.
5. Ubiquity
JS is everywhere. Therefore, ReactJS is, as well. The best part is that as a developer, you’re not limited by any patterns, templates and complex architecture. You’re able to construct an app pretty much as imagined it at the beginning. Which also means that other platforms like mobile, VR devices, TV and even to generating email are completely accessible.
6. XHR requests
React defines your view. However, it also gives you lifecycle “hooks” to make server-side requests. It means, after you understand how XHR requests work, you’re able easily to update the library you use to reshape those into BackBoneJS. These hooks are state, props, componentWillMount, and componentDidMount.
7. Isomorphic
ReactJS detects itself if there is a need to initially render the DOM onto the page. Therefore, if the view in your server-side code has been precompiled before delivering to the client’s browser, React will simply bootstrap its listeners.
One more great feature of ReactJS hides in its ability to generate HTML from its syntax. Which makes a great service in dealing with SEO bots. As those usually don’t run JavaScript.
8. State
In JavaScript, it might be complicated to keep track of information.
React solves this problem with the state. With it, you won’t run into situations where your JavaScript code gets completely confused and filled with tons of data elements. As now you can have a single, authoritative state.
9. Component reusability
ReactJS allows reusing of the components developed for some other application with the same functionality. And developers are allowed to reuse components which don’t produce any changes in and of themselves.
It helps with shortening the time necessary for development. While ensuring that your components function as they should. As a pleasant bonus, the speed of application development also increases.
10. One-direction data flow
ReactJS is all about stability. The smart component structure enables dealing with those directly. And downward data binding prevents the influence of child structures on their parents.
Consequently, thanks to such flow manner ReactJS greatly simplifies data binding. However, to change one object developer has to modify its state and apply updates, as child elements cannot affect parent data. Which also means, that only allowed components will be upgraded.
Author – Alex Volski: I’m a content writer at Thinkmobiles for 5 years. Web development is my latest passion. And I’m planning to become web developer pretty soon. But, for now on, I’m just walking around and constantly bother our web developers =). So if you’d like to chat about web React, Angular, JS or whatever – please contact me. Hope to hear from you soon.
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