As web development progresses in recent years, a number of new programming languages have become more prominent. Python is one of them. But, despite its popularity, web developers still choose to use JavaScript over Python—and there are just so many reasons why.

JavaScript runs in the browser, while Python is a backend server-side language. And while Python can help build websites, it can’t do it all by itself. It must be used to respond to requests that return HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Furthermore, even though there are frameworks like Django and Flask in Python, using it in developing web applications is still complicated. That said, JavaScript, with virtually endless capabilities for web programming, is a better choice in web app development.

Talking about JavaScript’s limitless possibilities, we will introduce you to one of its most popular frameworks, React.

What is React.Js?

React is an open-source JavaScript library (with features of a framework) used in web development to build interactive elements on websites. It had an official release in 2013 and since then has gained popularity because of its capability to help developers create fast single-page applications and user interfaces.

In the table shown above from the latest survey by Stack Overflow, you can see a great number of developers using and continuously choosing it. But, what are the key benefits and drawbacks that these developers consider when they’ve decided to use the library?

Advantages

React.Js offers numerous benefits when it comes to web app development. And we’re going to list them all for you to give you a wide overview.

1. Virtual DOM (Document Object Model)

React.JS offers a virtual DOM program and server-side rendering to ensure the speed and performance of the apps, even the complicated ones. And if you must ask what DOM is, it is a virtual representation of a tree-structured model of XML, HTML, or XHTML documents. Having said so, a minor modification at a higher level layer will significantly impact an application’s user interface. That’s when React.js developers came up with an idea of a virtual DOM, which is a virtual copy of real DOM.

In a virtual DOM, you can see and update what parts of the actual DOM need to change when an event happens. It lets you calculate the risks with each modification without influencing its entirety. As a result, it keeps your application high performance.

2. Reusable Components

One of the things that made React.js at its peak is its reusable components. They make the development process quicker and easier by allowing devs to reuse the codes that they already wrote. Meaning, that they won’t need to rewrite a code of the same feature from scratch.

3. Strong Community

Having said that React is an open-source library, it led to many developers creating a strong community to contribute to making React even better while also helping each other. So if you experience any problems, we are confident that the community will always be there to help you in any way they can. Not to mention the tons of tutorials, how-to’s, and publications you can access for free to give you a better understanding of the library.

4. Easy to Learn

One of the reasons why it’s the most used library in web development is because it’s easy to use. It has a simple framework that you can easily learn and understand rather than other popular frontend frameworks like Angular & Vue.

 5. SEO-friendly

The key to the success of every business online is search engine optimization. And React is one of the best tools for creating SEO-based web apps. It offers fast rendering and lowers the page load time to put your web application at a higher rank on Google Search Engine Result Page.

 6. One-Way Data Flow

Usual frameworks use a two-way data flow, which changes the entire application when you make any updates on any part of it. But React changes the game by having a downward data flow that ensures the parent structure’s stability when making any modifications in its child structure. So even if you alter child components, it won’t affect the parent data in any way.

 7. Expand Your Resources and Abilities

The main advantage of using React in a project is that developers can use both javascript and modern JSX. With this method, they will be able to employ HTML inserts in the code, giving them a lot of flexibility to restructure and boost overall efficiency.

Disadvantages

While React has many benefits, it also has some drawbacks that you should consider. These include:

 1. Inadequate Documentation

React receives frequent updates. While it’s good for the library’s performance, its volume lessens the developer’s time of writing thorough documentation. The only resources left to developers are bare-bones text guidelines.

 2. Development Speed

Talking about the volume of updates and new releases of React, it also affects developers’ speed in creating web applications, for they need to learn all the recent changes.

Conclusion

After knowing the advantages and disadvantages of React.Js, we can safely say that it’s worth the try. So what are you waiting for? Use React.js on your next web app development projects!

Article contribution by Bash Sarmiento

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