Key Reasons Why You Should Use React for Web Development in 2023

With the growing popularity of web applications, programming and development have also taken a course toward simplification. Frameworks are one of the many tools available to developers today that make the job easier for hobbyists and professionals alike.

Software frameworks allow website and application developers to manage software development from a single platform. Thanks to the high performance of frameworks and the wide range of business logic implementation options, developers and customers gain various technical and economic benefits.

In terms of JavaScript frameworks for building web applications, there are three technologies leading the market: React.js, Angular and Vue. In this article, we’ll take an in-depth look at React, find out what makes it different from the competition, and what benefits you’ll get when you choose this technology for your web development project.

Introduction to React.js: What is it used for?

React (React.js) is an open-source JavaScript library for creating interactive web interfaces. React was created by Facebook developers. The library began to be used on this social networking site in 2011, and later, in 2013, Facebook opened the React source code.

React is a simple, actively developing platform. The tool has already gone through several iterations of changes and updates. One of the biggest is the shift from classes to hooks, which are now actively used by developers. Many of the technological updates were originally added to React and subsequently became a source of inspiration for the creators of Angular and Vue. Thus, we will not make a mistake if we say that React is an advanced technology for frontend web development.

Various statistics and rankings confirm its popularity. According to the Stack Overflow 2022 survey, React ranks first among all frontend frameworks. And it remains the leader as of 2019. As of February 2023, React has over 201k stars in the GitHub ranking system and about 19 million npm downloads weekly.

What sets React apart from Angular and Vue and makes it number one today? Angular is the optimal solution for large, high-loaded projects that require a lot of code and logic. Vue is a younger technology. It’s a good option for building small applications, startups, etc. However, code written in Vue is harder to maintain when a project needs to scale. 

React, on the other hand, is a unique technology with impressive advantages for creating both small and large projects. Let’s dive into its capabilities and find out what these benefits are.

Benefits of React.js for web development

Performance

React uses virtual DOM technology, which makes it incredibly productive. This tool helps to update and visualize changes to the user interface efficiently. So, when we make changes to a site, such as filling out a form, applying filters, or adding items to the cart, the system does not update the code completely but only redraws the specific element that we changed. 

More specifically, React calculates the difference between the virtual DOM representation of the previous state and the new state. This process is called “reconciliation.” React then updates the virtual DOM to reflect the changes and then calculates the minimum number of actual DOM operations needed to update the real DOM to match the virtual DOM. This process of minimizing the number of DOM operations makes the React update process high-performance and efficient.

If you want to improve the performance of your product, the official React documentation offers many practical ways to speed up your React application.

Reusable components

Making the same changes in three or four different places in JS code takes effort, time, and good concentration. If more elements need to be changed, maintaining the code becomes agony.

One of the advantages of React is the ability to reuse components quickly and efficiently. Developers can break down the user interface into smaller, independent, and reusable components, each with its own state, properties, and behavior. These components can be combined and reused when creating an application to create a more complex user interface.

That’s why developers rarely have to create something from scratch in big projects. When playing with LEGO, you have many reusable parts, and you can use them to create something new in different ways. This helps keep the code organized and reduces the amount of duplicate code, which makes it easier to update and maintain. 

Another advantage of this approach is speed and flexibility. If you want to change some elements throughout the project, all you have to do is change one element.

Redux as a tool for data management

Redux is a tool for managing data state and user interface in JavaScript applications. Although it works with other frameworks, the technology was originally created with a focus on React. 

React developers use this tool extensively to extend React’s state management capabilities, ensuring data consistency across all components and keeping View up to date. This greatly simplifies project scalability and allows developers to discover vulnerabilities, asynchronous issues, or bugs quickly.

Simplified testing

Code written with React is easy to test. Declarative views (one-way data binding) make code as predictable as possible compared to other frameworks and reduce debugging errors. React provides component testing tools such as Jest and the React Testing Library, doing writing and executing tests for components easy. These tools allow developers to write unit tests for individual components and test interactions between components. 

The more used Jest already includes a set of commands that allow you to find bugs in your code quickly and efficiently. You just need to specify what you expect from a particular code, and the system will check to see if the code works.

React hooks

Hooks are a mechanism in React that allows you to work without classes. They are now the primary way of writing code for React applications.

Before the advent of hooks, state, and side-effect management was usually done with class components in React, with hooks, you can extract state logic from a component for testing or reuse without affecting the component tree. They also allow you to use functional components instead of class components, resulting in more readable and usable code.

Hooks have greatly improved React. They make it easy to write code and implement different functionality quickly and efficiently.

Main reasons why React.js is the best choice for your project 

Learning curve

React is very easy to learn. For example, a developer needs to know Typescript to learn Angular. Due to React’s simple design, use of JSX (HTML-like syntax) for templates, and very detailed documentation, learning React takes less time, usually a few weeks. 

You can get started with React quickly if you have a functional understanding of HTML/CSS and basic programming concepts. React is easy to learn, which is a big advantage if your team needs to learn a new framework quickly.

Strong community support

Since its development, React has attracted a huge community. Almost every technical problem React developers may encounter has already been described and has reliable solutions. Developers can always use the actively developing library (both official and unofficial) to solve their problems or ask questions in the available forums. 

Cheaper development

Although the cost of React development is determined by several factors, including the scale of the project, the level of expertise needed, and the hourly developer rate, there is a perception that React development is cheaper. This is because the pool of React developers is more significant than that of other frontend development technologies.

Scaling up the project

There is a common belief that a web app written in React is easy to scale and make into a React Native mobile app. Indeed, React code, structure, and logic can be used as the basis for building a new app. In practice, however, this does not often happen because mobile apps have completely different components.

In terms of scalability, the advantage is that it is much easier for a React developer to master React Native because the two technologies are similar. As the developers on our team say, it takes a week at most to learn. So if you have React developers on your team, they can quickly learn React Native and develop a mobile product.

SEO-Friendly

With proper optimization and server-side rendering, React can be made SEO-friendly. Server-side rendering (SSR) allows you to generate the source HTML content of your React application on the server so that search engines can easily crawl and index it. In addition, there are various tools and techniques for optimizing React sites for search engines, such as adding meta tags, using descriptive page headers, and implementing a proper header hierarchy.

Moreover, according to Google, the lower the page load time and the higher the rendering speed, the higher the application will rank in Google. React’s high rendering speed contributes to lower page load times and higher page rankings in search engines.

Updates

React is constantly evolving. Supported by Facebook and a large, active developer community, React is regularly updated with new features and bug fixes. 

Moreover, the documentation makes it easy to move from one version to the next, as the library has special scripts to help with updates. If you take Angular, for example, you can see that Angular versions are very different from each other. A developer who knows AngularJS may not be able to understand a project written in later versions.

Variety in react js projects

The structure of the React library allows it to be used in projects of any scale and complexity, from web stores to enterprise-level solutions. However, there are a few areas where React is considered the best choice:

• Admin Dashboards
• Dashboards (statistics with infographic elements)
• CRM systems
• Applications with complex logic
• Online stores and trading platforms
• Social networks

React has established itself as a reliable web development tool. Many Fortune 500 companies use it, including Netflix, Paypal, NASA, BBC, Lyft, and the New York Times. Our team also frequently uses React to create projects ranging from an asset management platform and online collaboration solution to a CRM system for the legal industry and a contract management application.

Conclusion

React has a well-designed and intuitive API, a virtual DOM for efficient updates and rendering, and a modular architecture that encourages reusable components. It also has many tools, libraries, and integrations, making it a versatile and flexible choice for web development projects.

Bragona Technologies has a proven track record of delivering high-quality React.js projects and a team of experts with the right skills and experience. We create custom solutions tailored to your needs and requirements using the latest web development technologies and tools. Contact us and get a free consultation with our experts.