Learning REACT JS – New Technology

Have you ever imagined if the world came to a standstill, wherein, there were no technology changes? If that was the case, we would still be in the old age, so-called… the “Stone age” without electricity or computers. The world is evolving and many new technologies are coming up.

As an IT professional, I believe that there is no dead end when it comes to new technologies. Technology keeps on changing at a fast pace and if we do not move ahead it with, we will surely lag so far behind that we will feel lost, similar to ‘Alice in Wonderland’.

I have been working in ASP.NET for the past 10 years, and recently our Company got a new project to work on, in REACT js. React js is all about javascript. Did you ever imagine writing the entire project code in javascript? All these years I have been coding in .NET and I used javascript only for client-side validations, for quick response to the user. This is much faster than sending a request to the server and getting the response back.

REACT is a completely different world of coding altogether. Using REACT, we write JSX code. JSX is a preprocessor that adds XML to javascript. We can use React without JSX, but using it makes React more elegant. We can develop interactive UI’s quickly.  It is component based. React can also render on the server using Node.  If we make a small change in any of the fields on the page, the entire page reflects the changes in a fraction of a second. No need for AJAX calls any longer. The reason why it is quick is because of ‘Virtual DOM’. Most javascript frameworks update DOM more than it is required and hence makes it slow. In React, for every DOM object, we have a virtual DOM object.  This is much lighter than the actual DOM and faster. Many companies who have websites that need quick response times prefer this technology. Some of the well-known sites are developed in this technology. eg. American Express, Flipkart, Facebook, Instagram, Yahoo.

Learning a new language is not that easy. When I started with it, I was so sure that it is just javascript and I can learn it in one week. But, but, but, it is completely different. At first, everything seems like magic. Then as days go by, it is easy to get a grip on it. But as it is in the case of learning to drive a car, we need to constantly practice, else we forget the skills required to apply the clutch and brake. So if we do not have hands on, then we might again lose the grip on working in REACT.

It is a very interesting language and fun to work with and yes, it is the future. You must have heard of IOT (Internet of Things). This is it. If you master REACT, you not far from reaching the heights in your career. I would like to end by saying ‘The only thing that is constant is CHANGE’, so move ahead.

Severina D’Souza