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React 18 - New Features & Improvement Strategies

Bidisha Das on April 17, 2022

On March 8th, the React team released the React 18 RC(Release Candidate). The latest release has brought a number of new features that would transf...
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Trishnangshu Goswami

Going through React docs and understanding new features gives little discomfort, instead this blog explains things each and every details with a very suitable example which anyone can easily understand with quick read. Amazing. Great job 👍🏻👍🏻.
Keep posting such blogs… Will collaborate someday.

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Bidisha Das

Thank you so much. You're the inspiration! :)

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Rick Delpo • Edited

Hi there React Devs, I am a beginner and struggled with React last year for about one month and then I switched to Plain JS because React seemed over my head. I wrote a dev article here at dev.to/rickdelpo1/react-vs-plain-j... outlining 17 reasons why I switched back to Plain JS. Am I being too shorted sighted? Am I missing something about the value of React?

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Bidisha Das

See , what I feel is maybe you need to go through better courses or maybe educative.io Or frontendmasters. They are really good to follow and will guide you through.

You can only be great in React is you are really really good in JavaScript.

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Rick Delpo

ok thanks, now I see the problem is that I am not that great with JS because I am mostly a backend developer. So perhaps Plain JS is more my speed. But I still have a hankering for React so will search for easier tutorials on the topic.

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JohnYepthomi • Edited

I feel the more familiar you get with JavaScript , it will make learning React easier for you. I taught myself web development on my own for the most part and I can say that I found react to be easy to understand as I had a better understanding of JS and also that I read through React Documentation and learn about details of component lifecycles etc and the rest follows.

The faster you familiarise yourself with reading Documentations , you will save yourself a lot of time and will improve your understanding of the library etc. I've adopted this habit and It's very very helpful.

Keep your JS fundamental strong and keep building on them gradually, Read MDN Documentation beyond just looking something up.

Embrace the ASYNCHRONOUS nature of JS.

You can do it.

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Bidisha Das

Can't agree more.

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Rick Delpo

Hey thanks John for ur response. I do agree that I can do it but now comes all the mega time to put in and the learning curve involved. Also I am a bit concerned about all the JS in React impacting my SEO.

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JohnYepthomi

That's a business decision and ofcourse there's SSR but my point was about learning something new.

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Peace Chen

Plain JS is ok for simple apps, but you'll find yourself buried in a sea of spaghetti code as that app becomes more complex. React and other libraries exist because real-world production apps contain a lot of code that needs good structure and design patterns.

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Rick Delpo

Can't wait for the spaghetti !! Am not totally giving up on React.
Perhaps this is when I will appreciate React much more.
Thanks for the heads up.
PS: my post is not meant to be a negative rant

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Ryan Jentzsch

Depending on your use case React (or any framework) can be overkill. I've been developing software for over 25 years and it took me some time to wrap my head around React. I developed mainly using OOP languages such as C#. React favors composition over inheritance and this was very frustrating at first. Keep at it. Eventually you'll get that "ah ha" moment and things will start falling into place.

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Rick Delpo

Thanks Ryan, then I'm not the only one struggling with React. Good to know. For me it is a real shock coming from 20 years of backend SQL development onto the frontend scene.

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Olamphzy

I'm also new to React. Would love to learn

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Andrew March

Looks like a lil typo in the useSyncExternalStore snippet

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Andrew March

Or how would
const state = useSyncExternalStore(subscribe, getSnapshot[, getServerSnapshot]);
work?

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Jackson Kasi

really thank for share with us :D

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Anshuman Bhardwaj

well explained @officialbidisha

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Bidisha Das

Thank you so much.

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Diego (Relatable Code)

Great write-up. Really excited to see what the future of React is with this update. Probably a ton of interesting new things that can be done by major third-party libraries.

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Bidisha Das

So am I guessing - the new hooks for third party library integration surely will play a huge role in this. Thanks a ton! 😊

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fayismahmood

👍👍👍👍👍🔥🔥

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Nikhil Chandra Roy

you should make your portfolio responsive, I have gone through your portfolio site, but it's okay, keep up it. Thanks

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Bidisha Das

Thank you so much! Sure Nikhil. I will surely work on it.

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Bidisha Das

Thank you so much. I have noted these points.

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Andres Ausecha Mosquera

Nice article. I love when writers take time to add some real life example, not just Copy/paste the docu theory that is sometimes boring.

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Bidisha Das

Thank you so much.

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TED Vortex (Teodor Eugen Duțulescu)

n1!

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Bidisha Das

Thank you!

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Varek

Thanks for sharing

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Tim Wu

Is there a project hosted on codesandbox/codepen demostrating all these new features?

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Bidisha Das

Nothing as of now. Let me see if I can replicate it.

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Amir Hameed

I needed one such article. thanks

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Peter Jaffray

Some of this reminds me of the really old "ripscript" from the BBS days in the 90's.

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Arzivre

the animation so good

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Bidisha Das

Thank you! 😊

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Kumar Kalyan

Amazing Content. Beginner Friendly and to the point !

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Bidisha Das

Thank you, Kumar. 😊

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Weverton Rodrigues

amazing!!!

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Bidisha Das

Thank you.

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Charles F. Munat

Sorry, but it's all bullshit. I downloaded the app and went to open it. WTF? I have to sign up to use it? Why? So they can track me, invade my privacy, sell my data?

No serious FOSS app requires you to give away your data to use it. That's not "free" at all -- it's the worst kind of price.

Am I missing something? Is there a way to use it without signing up?

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Pavindu Lakshan

Is there any update in React 18 to support writing error boundaries as functional components? It's a pain to still write error boundaries as class components.

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Bidisha Das

Nothing that I came across. For now I use a combination of both.