Today there are tons of technologies and tools to adapt and use when creating new web applications. Each solution has its own advantages and benefits. Yet, not all of them may suit your project. In this article, we’re going to overlook React technology and reveal its benefits so that you can define if it’s the best way to go for you.
6 Reasons Why React is So Popular Among Developers
Let’s start with the definition. React is a JavaScript library that is a brainchild of Facebook created to speed up JavaScript and make web pages dynamic and responsive. Netflix, Instagram, WhatsApp, Airbnb, Dropbox, BBC, Reddit, Imgur, Cloudflare, Flipboard, Postmates are a few big names that use React.
Currently, it’s one of the most popular and used technology solutions for developing user interfaces in a fast and effective manner. Thus, according to Google Trends search, which breaks down search trends over the past 12 months for software engineers jobs at React, Angular, Vue, you’ll notice that React developers are on demand all over the world. There are at least 6 reasons for the popularity of React that are outlined below.
1. Easy Learning Curve
Being a very simple and lightweight library that mainly deals with the view layer only, React has an easy learning curve. React provides comprehensive and thorough documentation (Getting Started) so that any developer can start building a beautiful web application pretty fast after reading the tutorial and installing the React. The basics of CSS and HTML will be enough to get started. What’s more, being open-source, there is a wide community support and a lot of solutions to common issues already presented and available to help you to succeed.
2. Reusable Components
One of the key features of React is its component-based structure. Each component:
- Has its own internal logic;
- Can be rendered in its own way;
- Can be reused anywhere it’s needed.
Herewith, developers can start with such tiny components as button, dropdown, checkbox, and other elements for creating wrapper components composed of these smaller pieces until the app is built. This approach has really amazing results:
- The developers can reduce the code that is easier to maintain;
- The app has a continent look and feel;
- It’s easier for businesses to scale the application, and many more.
3. Clean Abstraction
One of the most impressive features of React is that it gives you total freedom when it comes to the design of your application’s architecture. What’s more, React does not dictate any patterns so that you don’t need to have an intensive knowledge of MVP, MVC, MVVM, and others. It’s enough to have an understanding of a component’s life cycles, states, and props to build a robust app based on the business’ requirements.
4. SEO-friendly Mechanism
Another reason for React’s popularity is its ability to leverage the benefits of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). When dealing with React, businesses can decrease the page load time so that the app is ranked higher by such search engines as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others. It’s possible thanks to the fact that React is isomorphic — developers can use the same code for both client and server-side of an app.
5. Data Binding
When you need to build a complex and scalable application, then React suits you perfectly. It uses a special pattern architecture Flux to implement data binding. Flux is used for controlling the data flow of the components: every action goes through the dispatcher — a single control point, then store, and view. This enables easy debugging of all the self-contained components of your React app.
6. Fast Rendering with Virtual DOM
React’s Virtual DOM (VDOM) is another key feature that boosts performance of the web apps. The majority of JavaScript libraries and frameworks use the real DOM (Document Object Model) that is to be updated every time any changes in your UI’s state take place. Updating the DOM multiple times to re-render all the changes (even the smallest ones) reduces performance and slows down the process, making it time-consuming and expensive.
The VDOM of React solves the problem. It’s achieved thanks to the specific algorithm of work. Being a copy of the real DOM, any view changes are first reflected in the VDOM without changing the real DOM. After that, the advanced diff algorithm compares the states and representations (previous and current ones) of the VDOM and calculates the best way of applying these changes to the real DOM. In such a way, only what has actually changed will be applied to the DOM, ensuring minimum read and write time, increasing the performance.
Bottom line
Today, businesses can choose among the tons of technologies to develop a robust and scalable application. React is one of them. It’s a fast and flexible JavaScript library that helps developers to build user interfaces easier and more efficiently. Thanks to the range of the benefits like the virtual DOM, clean abstraction, reusable components, and so on you will get high performance, reduced costs, fast and clean coding. Besides that, having an easy learning curve, React enables even the newbies to develop high quality apps and single web pages.
About the Author
Alexey Kutsenko is the Head of Digital Marketing of DDI Development company. He is experienced in the development of marketing strategy for companies in different industries. He knows how to do the right marketing and watches all current marketing and industry trends.
