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React.js, behind the scenes

Diona Rodrigues on February 28, 2023

Did you watch the React.js documentary released on YouTube a few weeks ago? Some of Facebook's tech engineers spoke about how React started in the ...
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Michael Tharrington

Thanks so much for sharing this sum up, Diogo! I'm gonna have to check out this doc later on today.

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Diona Rodrigues

I hope you like it! :)

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Adrian keth Olita

Just want to share this infographic on the history of React bairesdev.com/react/#react-history

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Diona Rodrigues

Thanks for sharing it

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tim brandom

Super insightful!
Thank you!

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Diona Rodrigues

You're so welcome!

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Eckehard

Thank´s a lot for sharing the link. I´m very happy to get this background information.

People tend to present React as the one-tool-that-fit´s-all-needs. It is good to see, that react was mainly created to better handle the complexity, that arises from large teams and complex projects. It also has it´s price and it is still a work in progress.

Today, React serves a wide range of applications, but it is not necessarily the best solution to build a family hompage. In any case we should be happy, that there are different tools, as there are very different tasks to solve.

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Diona Rodrigues

You're so welcome!
I see your point @efpage and completely agree with you. React is defintelly not for all types of projects and developers should make their decision wisely. Sometimes I see people using a complex solution (like React) for a simple project (like a landing page), for instance. The best way is really understand the needs of the project in order to find the best solution for that specific problem - and sometimes plain HTML/CSS/JS is more than enought.

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Eckehard • Edited

The point which React adresses is pretty clear: Handle complex interactions. But this comes with a long and steep learning curve (see: Writing for-loops in an untold language). If you go with plain HTML/CSS/JS (which you will need as a precondition to use React anyway), you will end with a relatively small but universal set of commands to use, that serves for all cases.

For me it is not clear, whether the promise, that React made, will be kept. It comes with a big overhead and there are still a lot of performance issues.

But the main thing is: Performance is not everything! The question is not: Who ist fastest, but: Is it fast enough? So, maybe we should not ask: "Do we need React", but "Do we still need React"

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Diona Rodrigues • Edited

If we isolate the initial concept of React, I think you have a good idea of how to use this framework. However, nowadays React is much more than that. It is a powerful engine that has been used to create web apps (client-side and server-side rendering), static websites, mobile apps... There are also many powerful tools built on top of React such as Next.js and Gatsby that is beeing used to create marketing websites as well.

I believe that React created an ecosystem around it that made it take different directions over time, but still preserving its essence. The question, I would say, is: why are developers using React in any kind of project? I believe that one of the reasons is because many developers right now start their careers from these frameworks instead of learning the possibilities of HTML, CSS and JS outside these frameworks.