React.js is no longer a new term for tech pros these days. It is one of the most popular javascript frameworks prevailing in the market. Today, one of the most popular programming languages out there is Javascript. It is used by 67.8% of developers, according to the 2019 Stack Overflow report. The report also states that among all the Javascript frameworks available today, the most regularly used framework was found to be React.js with 60% usage.
When developer framework satisfaction is to be considered, React is again on the top at 64.8%, thus beating all other frameworks of Javascript.
These mesmerizing numbers show that React.js is the most loved and wanted framework. Eventually, a career in developing applications via React.js can obviously bring difference and make your reach better. When planning for a career in developing websites, you can do this by taking up an online React.js certification course and getting certified and becoming a professional React developer.
What is React.js?
As defined by the official website of React, it is an open-source Javascript library that is used for building user interfaces. This language is maintained by Facebook and a community of companies and individual developers.
To understand what React.js is, you first need to understand what javascript and javascript libraries are.
Javascript is an open-source scripting language that is used to create and monitor web content that is dynamic; which means that it includes interactive forms such as animated graphics, photo slideshows, or gifs. When you see a webpage where refresh happens automatically, pictures move, and chats popup, it is JavaScript making it happen.
So, javascript is a coding language that helps you add interactive features to your website or web application. JavaScript libraries are the collection of pre-written codes that are used for general JS tasks saving your effort in writing time-intensive tasks. Javascript has many libraries and React is one of them, that’s why the subscript JS is there.
Let us see why React JS is the developer’s favorite language.
Why is React used so widely?
Basically, React is used for developing UIs or user interfaces. To use a website, you need some buttons, search bars, on-screen menus, etc. or anything else that is used for interaction, and this is what is called user-interface. Before ReactJS came into existence, creating flawless UIs was a tedious task.
In 2011, Jordan Walke, a Facebook engineer, created ReactJS precisely to improve the development of these UIs. so, you can conclude that ReactJS is used exclusively for programming and designing the “front-end”.
It saves the development time and also minimizes the chances of coding errors by providing you with a reusable React library code. In addition, there are two key features that make ReactJS special, which are
- JSX
- Virtual DOM
Basically, a website has HTML documents at its core. These documents are displayed as web pages by your web browser. During this process, web pages are arranged by web browsers in the form of Document Object Model or DOM. When some modification is required, instead of editing the whole website, developers can modify DOMs to add the dynamic content to their project.
To carry out this modification process easily, React provides an extension called JSX or Javascript eXtension that helps web developers to edit their DOM by simple HTML code. The most important benefit of using JSX is that it is compatible with any browser platform.
The DOM works when the changes are small and the website is static. But when it comes to dynamic websites with excessive user interaction, DOM doesn’t work efficiently.
Here, a developer utilizes JSX to exploit and update its DOM as React creates a virtual DOM. Now, what is virtual DOM?
The virtual DOM is a copy of the website’s DOM. React refers to this virtual DOM to carry out changes into actual DOM.
Why Should you Learn React?
When it is required to build large web applications in an agile manner, react is an ideal language that is the preferred choice of web developers. When you need to update the web pages, you don’t need to reload the page, the data gets updated dynamically.
Moreover, React lets you build application user interfaces easily that are scalable, and swift. Also, you can combine the usage of ReactJS with other Javascript libraries like AngularJS with the help of MVC or Model View Controller.
Advantages of learning ReactJS
- Easy to learn
Being a lightweight library, ReactJS lets you start creating interfaces when you learn the fundamentals of the language. It is related to the application view layer only.
- Abstraction
You are not required to learn patterns like MVVM, the abstraction takes place if you are acquainted with the lifecycle, props, and state of the forms.
- JSX
JSX is used for creating templates, by facilitating HTML quotes. So, JSX is a simplified Javascript extension provided by React.
- Virtual DOM
React significantly reduces the time for carrying out modifications by creating virtual DOMS. when user interfaces are considered, performance issues are the first thing that a developer comes across. Virtual DOMs remove bottlenecks that communicate changes and triggers and compare the present and previous states of virtual and actual DOMs.
- Supported by Flux Architecture
Flux is a web building architecture of Facebook. It helps to optimize ReactJS in the unidirectional flow of data. With flux, data to be displayed is preserved in stores whose function is to sync the data across the application.
- React Native
The native applications for mobile such as Android OS are built by using ReactJS.
The other advantages of React are that it contains amazing developer tools that are available as Chrome extensions. In addition, the components in ReactJS are reusable.
Conclusion
The average annual salary of a ReactJS developer is $68,153 per year. Apart from the benefits of learning ReactJS, the salary of a UI developer using React is also attractive.
Top websites such as Dropbox, Cloudflare, BBC, Yahoo, PayPal, and many more are the leaders among around 1.06 million websites using React.
Obviously, you can have a lucrative career in UI building if you add a ReactJS certification to your resume. If you want to get certified, the best path you can go through is to enroll yourself in an online training course that makes sure you get certified in the very first attempt of taking the exam.
Wish you all the best.
