Ever since the launch of JavaScript, there has been a tremendous amount of growth in the development of web applications. The sophisticated JavaScript libraries have helped various programmers in the development process to create amazing applications.

React.js is one of those JavaScript libraries that has grabbed worldwide attention in the online domain. The popularity is understandable as we look around the features provided by this library. React was created with a business mindset, it was made by combining the solutions from HTML and JavaScript side by side.

Introduction to React

React is a JavaScript library (NOT a framework) that was developed by Facebook back in 2011, after two years in 2013 they gave it an open-source status. Since the first release, the monthly downloads have been ever increasing and cross millions of downloads every month. This library is regularly updated by a mass community of developers. The reacts GitHub repository has over 136,000 stars from developers.

Powerful features of React:

To get into a high-end overview, the core concepts are needed to be understood. React offers three primary features that enable developers to create great quality applications. These features are summarized in details as follows:

1. Creating a Component:

Since writing the code can be bulky, react allows you to break your creating into pieces of code called “Components”. Each component can reflect a particular part in the front-end UI. The good thing about it is that they can be repeated over different web pages.

Thus, by the proposal of components, reusability of code help save a lot of time in development. The UI designing is seamless as React has a declarative nature. Thus, developers focus more on logic and modern functions.

2. Virtual DOM

Since AJAX, virtual DOM (Document Object Model) is considered to be the biggest leap in web designing and development. By enabling the creation of fast and scalable web applications. The library uses virtual memory to construct a representation of a page, here, it performs necessary updates right before rendering the web page in the respective browser.

3. Easy Learning:

Unlike the kinds of Angular or Vue.js, it is important to note that react is NOT a framework. React is a library that works with other JavaScript libraries to make the development easier and consistent. Thus, it is much easier to learn to work with React in comparison to other JavaScript libraries.

Analyzing the Pros and Cons of using React in any business model:

Being a miniature library, React can serve various advantages over other libraries. A glimpse of what React does great and where it falls a bit short is illustrated in the table below.

Pros

It is SEO friendly. It requires more code in some cases. UI test cases can be created easily. Data changes are required to be processed manually. The code is reusable due to component-driven development approach As the number of components increases, React seems to work faster in comparison to other JavaScript libraries.

Cons

It requires more code in some cases for enterprise applications. Data changes are required to be processed manually. It is view oriented.

Which companies can use React?

The simplicity of React made it easier to be adopted by various companies around the globe. For a programmer, it takes minimum effort to learn to React and as React offered code reusability with simpler modifications in the code. There are so many companies currently using React and it can be used by any company to boost its performance. A few of these companies are Uber, Dropbox, CNN, Facebook, Netflix, Whatsapp, DailyMotion, IMDB, The New York Times, Salesforce, Instagram, Reddit, Venmo and over a hundred of another medium to large scale companies.

To understand the reason as to why there is so much convergence towards this technology we need to understand the reasons why React it is so much “reactive”. There is so much good about this technology relative to the things it lacks that people are immensely enjoying its features and are shifting towards this technology.

How can React make your business “Reactive”?

Boosting the performance

The most important factor in today’s web application development is to make the website react faster. By eliminating the requirement of using the heavy framework and managing to make quick responses by the help of virtual DOM. React can make beautiful UI designs by itself and the fast rendering capabilities of React is the reason for its success over the years.

Easy migration towards the latest technology

React is lightweight, people fall in love with this language the React code can be integrated into any existing infrastructure easily. This is in contrast with the compatibility issues between Google’s Angular framework in the Angular 1.x and Angular 2. To make the compatibility possible the companies had to train developers so that they can work efficiently with the latest technology. Thus using React have minimized the efforts of the engineers and managers in migrating from an older to newer technology.

Seamless SEO integration

React significantly reduces the page load time, it has faster rendering speed. SEO is a gateway to boost immense traffic on the platform and for any online business, it is a must. React adapts performance based on real-time user traffic and these features are not handled by most frameworks.

Conclusion:

React’s advantages exceed its disadvantages and thus it is a quite adaptive and robust programming library. It is known that React has the ability to remain relevant to the market for a long time to come. Thus, various companies are investing in this technology with an open heart.

The whole point here is to showcase the awesomeness and usefulness of React. The modern applications need what it offers and React has proved its dominance in the market in this decade and is going to be great for a long time to come. In today’s “paradox of choices” scenario in the web development field, React stands to have a great future and it might offer much better functionalities in the time to come.