The development of websites and web applications has evolved, and developers have found different ways to solve some of the bottlenecks that they encounter while developing websites and web applications. From building libraries such as jQuery to building frameworks such as Angular, all in a bid to easily and quickly develop highly performant websites and web applications. Among all the libraries that were developed to build web applications, react appears to be the most popular.
React is an open-source frontend library that makes it easy for developers to build websites and web applications without having to directly manipulate the Document Object Model (DOM). It has different features which help to keep the UI (the part of a web application that users can see and interact with) of a web application in sync with the state changes. It helps developers to build user interfaces that are scalable, efficient and reusable by breaking them into small reusable components.
In this article, you will learn about a brief history of React, its purpose, core features of React and what makes it stand out from other libraries and frameworks.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Prerequisite
A brief history of React
Purpose of React
Core Features of React
What makes React stand out from other libraries and frameworks
Conclusion
Prerequisite
You just need a fundamental knowledge of how the web works.
A brief history of React
React started as an internal tool known as FaxJS within Facebook to help solve the problem of updating the newsfeed on Facebook in real-time without having to refresh a page and other performance-related issues. It was created by Jordan Walke and was later made open-source in 2013.
Purpose of React
The core purpose of React is to enable developers to build scalable, re-usable and dynamic user interfaces.
Core Features of React
Component-based approach: React uses a component-based approach where user interfaces are broken down into reusable components.
Unidirectional data flow: This involves the flow of data in only one direction. In React, data flows from the parent component to the child component. This approach helps to make React more efficient, easy to debug and less prone to errors.
Virtual DOM: React uses the concept of virtual DOM. A virtual DOM is a lightweight replica of the actual DOM that helps to make React more performant.
Use of JSX: JSX which stands for JavaScript XML is a syntax extension of JavaScript that allows developers to write JavaScript code within HTML.
What makes React stand out from other libraries and frameworks
React is a popular, versatile and open-source library that is widely used among developers to build efficient user interfaces. It stands out from other developers due to the following reasons:
It is fast.
It is very flexible as it can be easily integrated with other libraries and frameworks.
It is less prone to errors.
It is easy to debug.
It is easy to learn.
It has an active community and ecosystem.
Conclusion
React is a top-notch library that helps developers to build efficient, scalable and performant web applications. In this article, you were able to learn about React, its history, purpose, core features and the edge that it has over other libraries and frameworks.
To learn more about React, kindly visit the official documentation via the link below: