REACT DEVELOPERS - Tools, Skills, and Guidelines

React is the most powerful, efficient, and flexible front-end library of JavaScript for building user interfaces. Sometimes it is referred to as React.js or ReactJS. It was developed by Facebook in 2011-2012, but is now maintained by Meta and a community of individual developers and companies across the world. It is a free and open-source UI library of JavaScript based on UI components. React follows the declarative programming paradigm. Developers usually design views for each state of an application and React updates and re-renders the components when state changes. The aim of developing React was to allow developers to easily create User Interface (UI) for websites and applications much faster. It lets us compose complex UIs from small, reusable, isolated pieces of code called components by combining JavaScript and HTML. A component is usually responsible for returning React elements by describing what should appear on the screen. Reusable components also help a developer in maintaining a consistent coding style and the overall maintainability of an application. React’s main concept is Virtual Document Object Model (DOM). Virtual DOM is a tree that is based on JavaScript components implemented in React by mimicking the real DOM of JavaScript. React makes sure that our component always does the least amount of DOM manipulation needed to update the state of the component. This mechanism is made possible by implementing the virtual DOM. Nowadays, so many popular websites are using React for building their UI, partially or completely, like Facebook, Instagram, Khanacademy, Codecademy, AirBnb, Netflix, New York Times, WhatsApp, Reddit, Skype etc. Topcoder is using React for building their awesome UIs as well.

React is becoming more and more popular as time passes. That’s why the demand for React developers is also rising. Who are React developers? Simply, a React developer is someone who designs and creates web applications or mobile applications using React. Below, we will see what a React developer does, how to become a good React developer, how a React developer uses React Developer Tools, why they love NodeJS, what React Native is and if we can use React Native for web development. So let’s start.

WHAT DOES A REACT DEVELOPER DO?

React developers (also called front-end developers or JavaScript developers) are responsible for designing and implementing web applications using React or mobile applications with React Native that are user-friendly, functional, and highly responsive. React developers are called front-end developers as they build professional, modern user-interfaces to improve application performances. They leverage their knowledge about basic JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. They work closely with testers, designers, and project managers to create robust and effective applications. They can design the aesthetic elements of a page from fonts to color choices. This requires the use of front-end technologies JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. A React developer’s day-to-day activities can be quite diverse. Typically they are deeply involved in all stages of interface development. Below let’s discuss some core responsibilities we might expect from a React developer:

• Develop Front-end Features: A React developer’s main responsibility is developing front-end features. Most likely they don’t need to focus on the back-end techstack. They will focus on building UI elements like navbar, sidebar, footer, etc. But they have to build the UIs according to back-end APIs. That’s why they also need to have knowledge about the back-end structure as well.

• Write Code: A React developer converts wireframes, prototypes, blueprints in code.

• Optimize Application Functionality: In addition to designing and implementing new features, a React developer is also responsible for cross-platform functionality. They should ensure that the application can run efficiently in different browsers like Chrome, Opera, Safari, Mozilla, etc, and devices like mobile phones, desktops, laptops, tablets, etc. They should implement features in a way that doesn’t take much time for loading and doesn’t hang the device.

• Write Unit Test: Being involved with all the stages of UI development requires a developer to test every single component and feature they create to ensure that no error or bug exists. This approach makes an application error and bug free.

These are the core responsibilities that we can expect from a React developer.

HOW TO BE A GOOD REACT DEVELOPER

It is difficult for beginners to learn React because of its modular nature. In React most modules are interrelated and require us to use other tools, softwares, or libraries to build a complex application. To become a good React developer a beginner should have a good grasp of some advanced features of JavaScript. Let’s discuss some skills that we need to know to become a great React developer:

• Must know basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

• Should be pretty familiar with JavaScript functional programming.

• Should also be familiar with Ecmascript (ES6) and optionally TypeScript as well.

• Need to know some modern concepts like arrow functions, anonymous functions, promises, async await, closures, curried functions, higher order functions and immutables in JavaScript which will be useful for working in React. If you are not comfortable working with these concepts then it will be very hard for you to continue working with React because these are the most common features of React that will help you create better apps.

• Should have good communication skills (like be fluent in English) because a developer needs to develop according to the client’s requirements. If a developer doesn’t have good communication skills, then it will be harder to understand how the client wants to build the application.

• One should start building small projects first like portfolio websites, social media sites, hotel management sites, etc. These projects will make a developer comfortable working on these kinds of big projects later on.

WHY DO REACT DEVELOPERS LOVE NODE?

Some developers may mistakenly think that Node (also known as NodeJS or Node.js) is a must for working with React. But that’s not true at all. To work on a React project, Node is not mandatory. Node is an open-source, free, cross-platform, back-end JavaScript runtime environment that lets us run JavaScript code without opening any web browsers. Node was designed to build scalable networked applications. It lets us use JavaScript for server side-scripting to create dynamic web page content before the page is sent back to user web browsers. Node represents a “JavaScript everywhere” paradigm, thus unifying web application development around a single programming language rather than using so many different languages. Not only JavaScript is supported, one can use CoffeeScript, Dart, TypeScript, ClojureScript and others. Node is concurrent and no-blocking. Node is the most popular platform for tools to make working with React much easier. There could be two reasons why React developers love Node. For example:

• Node ships with a reliable Node Package Manager (NPM) and it works with the NPM registry hosted at npmjs.com. Using the NPM CLI, a developer can install any package/library they need from the available packages in the registry. Like if we need to use Material UI Icon in our project then we can install it via “npm install @material-ui/icons” and so on.

• Node has reliable module dependency managers like CommonJS modules and ECMAScript6 modules. For the CommonJS modules, we use the “require” function in Node combined with the “module” object like (require(“axios”). And for ES6 modules we use the import/export JavaScript syntax like (import React from “react”).

Node is also the most popular platform where we can run our server and host our React project. Although, without hosting the project in node we can still use it for the tools it offers us. The Webpack Node package makes it very easy to bundle our multi-file React project in a production ready single-file and compile JSX (by using babel) in the same process. There are so many other options available over Node. But then why do we love using Node? Let’s highlight some facts:

• Most of the React projects and examples we will find on the web are based on Node. It will be easier to get help when we are using Node in our project as most developers are familiar with it.

• As Node uses Javascript and React is also in JavaScript it is easier to code. Finding developers is also easier because most developers know JavaScript.

• And finally, most important, we can execute our React front-end code in a Node environment during developments. It is the easiest option for doing server-side rendering and having an isomorphic/universal application.

HOW TO USE REACT DEVELOPER TOOLS

When we are working with React, some tools are extremely necessary for debugging and finding errors. React Developer Tools is the tool for this. It is a Chrome DevTools Extension (it also works on other browsers like Firefox) for React. It allows us to inspect React Components hierarchies in the Chrome Developer Tool. This extension requires us to give permission for accessing the React Component Tree. But it does not send our information remotely. It is free and open-source. Once we install this extension in the browser, we will get two new tabs added to our Chrome Dev Tool. One is “Component” and another is “Profiler”. The component tab will show us the root components that got rendered in the page along with all the subcomponents as a tree. By selecting one of the components in the tree, we can inspect this component and edit its current props and states on the right side of the panel. If we select an element using the regular elements tab in the dev tool then switch to the component tab, here the element will be automatically selected in the component tree. We can use the profiler tab to inspect the performance of our application. Profiler tab lets us record performance information. A React developer should consider using this tool to make the application bug free and without any memory leaks.

CAN WE USE REACT NATIVE FOR WEB DEVELOPMENT?

Yes! All this time we talked about building websites using React. But a few times we also mentioned React Native. Though we said that React Native is used for building mobile applications it is not true completely. React Native is an open-source framework for cross-platform mobile application development. In March 2015, Facebook created React Native to develop applications for iOS, Android, and Microsoft UWP. Many people struggle in deciding if they should create React Native apps or cross-platform apps. The advantage of using native apps is that they offer better UIs, User Experiences (UX) and performances. Native apps were developed only for working on the same platform they were built for. That’s what created problems for those businessmen who want to deploy their apps on every app store possible. They don’t want to waste time building one app for mobile applications and another one for web applications. It is time consuming and strenuous work. For developing native apps we need Java developers for Android and Swift or C++ developers for iOS. So, keeping these all in mind, Facebook gave us a solution for this. Now React Native allows us developers to build native apps using only one language, JavaScript. No need to know multiple programming languages anymore. We can use React only for building web applications. That means we can’t use these apps without a web browser. But when we are building apps using React Native we use these both as a web application and mobile application. According to the 2019 Stack Overflow Survey, React Native is the sixth most popular framework used by developers. Now, let’s see some popular sites/companies that use React Native to build their websites:

• Facebook

• Blomberg

• UberEats

• Discord

• Instagram

• Pinterest

• Skype

• Walmart

• Shopify

• Salesforce

It is up to the developers what they will choose for building an app: React or React Native. If we want to build an app that will be cross-platform, robust, fast, efficient, performant, reliable, friendly, and native then we should choose React Native to stick to one single language. Otherwise we should choose React.

CONCLUSION

I hope this content will be helpful for a beginner who wants to become a React developer.

REFERENCES

• https://reactjs.org/

• https://reactnative.dev/