You might have heard people saying that ReactJS is one of the best options for web app development. In fact, many experts often recommend business owners hire ReactJS developers for building web UI components and web applications. But don’t you wonder why it is so popular and why considering it for developing your web app can be the right choice? Well, if you do, then you are certainly in the right place. This article will discuss the top reasons why ReactJS is widely used and how it can prove to be a beneficial resource to enhance your online business presence. So, let’s begin this discussion.
ReactJS: A Brief Overview
The Facebook development team developed ReactJS in 2011 but just for their own use. In 2012, Instagram, a subsidiary of Facebook and one of today’s most popular social networking platforms, also started using it. It was in 2013 when Facebook officially made ReactJS open-sourced. As time passed, most of the companies began using it in their production environments.
In 2015, Facebook open-sourced React Native too, a cross-platform app development framework that uses React and JavaScript to offer the native experience to the users. Today, several Fortune 500 companies are using ReactJS for developing their web app development projects. Moreover, the React development team at Facebook constantly keeps a check and regularly launches new updates to fix bugs and enhance the performance of ReactJS.
Why Should You Go for React?
Now, this could be the primary question that might be revolving in your head. Today, there are many more options available in the market, such as AngularJS and VueJS. So, why should one go for ReactJS? Well, here are some reasons that will answer this.
React is Flexible
Initially, React was developed with just a single focus: to build components for web applications. However, as its popularity increased, its ecosystem also expanded to cover several other use cases.
Today, you can develop a static website with React using web development tools like Gatsby. With React Native, you can create interactive mobile applications for both Android and iOS devices. Moreover, you can also create desktop applications with ReactJS using tools like Electron. With React, you can also perform server rendering of its components using NextJS.
As the cherry on the cake, you can use ReactJS in your existing projects too. For that, you can first change a small segment of your current app using React. If it works fine, you can convert your entire application into React. Although ReactJs is a library, not a framework, still all these use cases of React show that it is pretty flexible and adaptive.
React Comes with Facebook’s Support
As mentioned earlier, Facebook’s React development team maintains the performance of React, and the company is deeply committed to it. In fact, the top four React contributors on Github are the employees working full-time for Facebook. Moreover, the React team manages a blog that continually provides you with information related to each release.
Facebook also offers Codemod, a command-line tool that automatizes modifications to your codebase. In simple words, it automatically replaces older components with newer specifications.
React is Excellent in Terms of Performance
There is no doubt that JavaScript is fast. However, when you update the Document Object Model (DOM), it can become slow. That’s the reason many frameworks and libraries also perform slowly when a DOM update is in progress.
React does not work like that. It uses Virtual DOM to monitor the values of each component’s state. When there is a change in the component’s state, React compares the existing DOM state with the new one and figures out the inexpensive way to update the DOM.
This process seems easy; however, it is not. But the way React handles it makes it look simple. React avoids layout thrashing, due to which the browser does not need to recalculate the position of everything when the DOM elements change.
React is Way Easy to Test
Testing is easy when you are using React. Unlike traditional UI browser testing, you require no, or just a little configuration for testing React web apps. You do not need browsers to examine your app. React comes with the Node command line for quick testing. In React, you can run multiple tests, and they are relatively faster than traditional UI browser testing. Moreover, you can quickly write React tests using tools like Enzyme and Jest.
Final Thoughts
With the above information about React, you might have understood why it has become so popular globally. Undoubtedly, it is an efficient tool to create interactive and highly engaging web, mobile, and desktop applications. Its features can immensely benefit you and your business if implemented correctly. All you need is to hire top ReactJS programmers and developers who can use their expertise to build you robust and feature-rich web applications.
