5 Reasons Why You Should Use React JS in Your Next Project

ReactJS is a front-end JavaScript library created by Facebook and Instagram. It’s used to build user interfaces for applications and is quickly becoming one of the most popular libraries for doing so. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why you should use React in your next project:

1. The Virtual DOM

React keeps a virtual representation of an application’s page structure in memory and intelligently compares it to any incoming changes. Anytime a render is required, React compares the incoming changes to the previous page and only updates the parts that were actually manipulated. Imagine a page has a button that changes the color of some text when clicked. It doesn’t make much sense to re-render the entire page for that. React is smart enough to re-render only the text that changed color and leave the rest of the page untouched. This allows React to perform extremely efficiently and is arguably its most impressive feature.

2. Reusable Components

React strongly encourages the use of components, a huge time-saver when it comes to development. A component could be anything — a button, a navigation bar, a registration form — whatever an application needs. Once a component is built, it can be used over and over again throughout an app. Smaller components can be used together to create more complex components and different data can be passed into components to create unique instances. Not only does this save you time but it makes it easy to keep a consistent look and feel across your application.

3. JSX

JSX allows developers to write HTML-like code right into their JavaScript. React takes care of the heavy lifting by transforming the JSX into React compatible code. There is some debate over whether or not you should combine HTML and JavaScript in the same file, but I find it extremely convenient. Most developers are familiar with HTML syntax and it allows me to picture the structure of the component or page I am building more easily.

4. Community Support

React is maintained by Facebook and Instagram but also has a great open-source community. There are a ton of React-specific solutions for any problem you may face. Don’t have time to build your own components? There are numerous component libraries that offer different buttons, modals, progress bars and more. Need help with form validation, data visualization or routing? There are React libraries for those as well. And if you ever get stuck with something, there are a ton of great React resources and documentation online to get you back on track.

5. Learning Curve

After using other front-end JavaScript frameworks, React is relatively easy to pick up on its own. Frameworks like Angular are much more complex and come pre-loaded with many other features. React is flexible in this regard and many times you’ll want to pair React with routing, state management, and other libraries to create a robust application. Even after adding additional packages to a project, React is still extremely intuitive to use in my opinion.

Conclusion

React has its pitfalls as well, but in my opinion, the pros far outweigh the cons. The virtual DOM makes it extremely fast, component use cuts development time, JSX helps make coding with React feel more familiar, and it’s easy to pick up and get started with quickly. I really enjoy developing applications with this young library and I hope the community continues to grow.

While React is a  great framework, it certainly is not your only option. For that reason, we want to offer you a free 15-minute consultation in which we will help you decide what is the best way to go about building YOUR project. Follow this link to get started.