There are more than a dozen different tempting front-end frameworks out there, like React, Angular, Vue, Ember, and others. As a human being, we have limited time and we tend to choose the best(obviously, there is no best), and having all these choices make it difficult. In this article, I want to talk about the reasons why I chose React over the other ones.
Is being used by top companies
React is created by Facebook which by itself gives a lot of credibilities to React, but the better part is that there are more leading companies that are using and participating React community like Instagram, Airbnb, Netflix, UBER and much more.
Therefore, the job market is very hot for React. If you look the chart below which is taken from Hacker News Hiring Trends, it shows that React is the most demanded skill on the current market.
I like the way JSX works
JSX is a syntax extension that React uses for templating and it’s so similar to HTML, and it enables to generate HTML in your Javascript. You can use React without JSX, but I don’t see why someone would do that.
Flexibility
React is a library and not a framework. It’s very easy to use it with other libraries, and as a developer, you have the freedom to choose every single part of your stack from the best libraries. It’s also easier to use react in legacy apps.
React Native
Since the mobile apps boomed, a lot of frameworks tried to make mobile programming more pleasant for web developers and cheaper for companies, but none of them were able to give the performance and freedom of native programming. However, React Native started gaining popularity even among native mobile developers. Because you can make native mobile apps, and it has a very active community that keeps it up to date and comprehensive.
Learning Curve
Learning React is so easy and appealing for beginners, and you can start using it so fast, but when you combine React with Redux or other state container frameworks, it becomes a little bit different, especially if you only used MVC pattern for programming, but it’s worth the effort.
React is a game-changing library the way JQuery was ten years ago, but don’t forget that even React has cons and you as a programmer should choose the right tool for the job.
