4 Reasons To Use React In 2021

Many CTOs I’ve met search for more and more reasons to use React as the core of their tech stack in 2021. And I’m not surprised.

Last few years React totally overtook all the other front-end competition in popularity, mostly thanks to the extreme focus on user experience and development simplicity.

However, each and every technology is working to achieve the same goal, but there are small unfair advantages, that are putting React development in a favourable position and making it better and more future-proof than the rest.

1. Concurrent Mode

Facebook came up with Concurrent Mode (on the day of writing this article it is still experimental). It is mostly built (as always) with user and development experience in mind.

Putting simple – in Concurrent Mode, rendering is interruptible, which improves the general user experience and enables new features that weren’t possible before.

All those features will also help React apps adjust to the users’ device capabilities and the speed of the network.

It will also make the developers’ life easier, and help them make it as easy as possible to build apps that start fast and stay fast, no matter how big they grow.

The goal is the same since always, but this time, the future of React becomes incredibly interesting.

2. Backward compatibility

Still, none of the other frameworks is able to be so easily compatible.

Whenever a new version of React is coming out, the public API remains almost totally the same. This helps Facebook refresh its code and still be able to work on its old pieces at the same time.

In other words, you don’t have to learn React again and again after each and every launch, and you can be sure your older version remains compatible with all the new components.

3. Custom React Renderers

Since React been extended to React Native to build native apps, there was a need for a different rendering implementation.

import React from 'react'
// import ReactDOM from "react-dom";
import CustomRenderer from './renderer'

const Text = props => {
  return <p className={props.className}>{props.content}</p>
}

const App = () => {
  return (
    <div>
      <Text className="hello-class" content="Hello" />
      <span style={{ color: 'blue' }}>World</span>
    </div>
  )
}

// ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById("root"));
CustomRenderer.render(<App />, document.getElementById('root'))

This need gave birth to the Custom React Renderers concept, which enables you to build your own custom implementation.

4. Ubiquity and futureproof

Thanks to its popularity and heavy usage, React is becoming the number one front-end choice even for many big projects, and many big players (like Sitecore, or Meteor).

Because of many contributors and an extremely active community, React documentation is getting better each and every day, and most of the issues that have ever been reported are fixed now.

This makes React a very stable and mature technology and attracts many open-source initiatives.

Take Gatsby development, for instance, which builds the fastest static websites so far, thanks to the combination of the best React and GraphQL features.

Summary

Each and every technology seems to have the same goal – doing things easier, faster, and ultimately, better.

However, a massive contribution, community, and ubiquity of React will not only help him stay his ground but also become better and strengthen his number one position even more.

The future almost always brings better things, but React also makes this future looks incredibly interesting.

Read more

React vs Angular – which one to choose?

React vs Vue in 2022 – a comparison

React JS pros and cons

18 tips for a better React code review (TS/JS)

React JS FAQ: The most common questions