After nearly ten years of service, ReactJS — or React — has maintained its position as a widely used open-source front-end JavaScript library to build user interfaces (UI) for various websites and applications.
According to Statista, React became the second most used web framework worldwide in 2023 after Node.js, thus proving its ongoing relevance and demand in the industry.
React’s popularity last year can be attributed to its users thanks to the abundance of features it offered for web developers. Although the latest version of the library, 18.2.0, was released on June 14, 2022, many web developers remain satisfied with its capabilities.
Throughout 2023, React has developed several key features, such as React Server Components (RSC), Suspense, and React Forget. RSC allows developers to write UI components with Server Components that they can cache and render on the server.
As for Suspense, it allows developers to manage the loading state and asynchronous data rendering. Meanwhile, React Forget enables automation of the memorization process and elimination of useMemo and useCallback hooks — common features that developers use to memoize a function and caches the value from an expensive function.
Recent and upcoming improvements
React has provided several updates to its library, with other updates on their way to release this year. For example, JSX, the library’s declarative syntax, received several improvements early this year, such as conditional rendering without ternaries and enhanced support for fragments. As a result, developers can write JSX more concisely with more readable syntax parts, and they can enjoy using cleaner databases.
Concurrent Mode is an anticipated update to React, which allows developers to make React applications more responsive. Furthermore, Concurrent Mode also allows developers to create a smoother user experience (UX) for users and reduce instances of UI freezes.
Another upcoming update is the updated developer tools that offer a smoother debugging and profiling experience. With these tools, web developers can identify and address performance issues better. The tools can also improve insights for developers and provide reduced debugging time and faster development cycles.
Future React trends
As for the potential trends ReactJS may have in 2024, the library will probably receive additional improvements in real-time functionality. The library is set to improve this functionality because of the continuous demand for real-time updates, such as live updates and notifications, since last year. As such, it is expected that improving the library’s real-time functionality will stay its course this year.
Another possible trend in React is the potential integration with GraphQL, a query language for APIs. Compared to its predecessors, GraphQL is newer, more flexible and easier to use by developers.
Although GraphQL queries are not faster than queries from other languages like Rest, they have smaller and more efficient requests because users can pick any field they want to query.
Even further, other React-related trends are also expected to take place in the future, such as the integration of the library with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), advanced personalization features, and integration with serverless architecture. By combining React with these technologies and benefits, developers can personalize content delivery in apps and websites and automate the website-use process.
Lastly, the integration between WebAssembly (Wasm) and React sometime in 2024 will allow web developers to increase performance optimization and build complex applications in browsers. Wasm has received positive reception from web developers because it helps them run code in C, C++, and other languages in web browsers with native-level speed.
