What are the Advantages of Reactjs over Javascript
Gone are those days, when web developers relied heavily on Frameworks like Vanilla JS or jQuery to implement front end logic. As Web apps are increasingly becoming more complex and dynamic, the demand for new tools and libraries like React rose to meet the complexity and to speed up the process.
Deep down in this article, we will understand the advantages of using React over plain
Javascript for your web app development. But, before moving further it’s important to think on a point that React itself is written in Javascript, it means writing React is just like writing Javascript code. Isn’t it? There is no doubt in saying that developers can do each and everything with Javascript that they do with React, then why companies are opting to React for their web app development?
To make you clear, let’s first understand what is meant by “Plain” Javascript, also called
“Vanilla” Javascript?
What is “Plain” Javascript?
Plain Javascript is a fast, lightweight scripting language used for the development of advanced web applications, especially for single-page applications. Like React, Javascript does not set any rules about how data is defined or how UI will look like. Web apps build with Javascript are more customizable than apps build in any other language. It will give your apps more air to breathe with but also it can lead to problems in the long run.
Also Read: What are the advantages of reactjs over angular
Why use “React”?
React allows you to do the same things that you do with Javascript but in a lot easier way. With React features like Virtual DOM, code reusability, component-based structure, etc., you can save your lot of valuable time and budget.
Advantages of using React over Plain Javascript:
- Virtual DOM: React.js best works for developing single-page applications. This is due to the libraries ability to efficiently update the DOM without having to send a request to the server. Consider a situation, when you develop an app that has a lot of user interaction and data updates, you have to carefully consider how DOM updates can impact your app performance. Even with fast client platforms, DOM manipulation is not going to be an easy task, it can lead to annoying user experience by decreasing your app performance. This inefficiency can be overcome by using Virtual DOM.
Virtual DOM carries the same properties as a real DOM object but it is abstract and a copy of DOM only. Any new view changes required are first made to the Virtual DOM only, which is not visible to the user. Then an efficient algorithm determines the changes that need to be made to the real DOM by comparing it to the Virtual DOM, and finally, only those changes are applied to the Real DOM resulting in a lesser update time, providing higher performance and overall a good user experience.
| DOM | Virtual DOM |
| 1. Reading and writing are really slow in DOM. | 1. It has rapid DOM rendering speed because manipulating the virtual DOM is much faster because nothing gets drawn onscreen. |
| 2. Changing the whole DOM each time when there is an update will slow down the page. | 2. Only the required part of DOM is updated. |
- Thus, with Virtual DOM the whole page needs not to be changed, but only the sub-components are there that really changes, which in turn looks like that the whole page has rendered to the user.
- Code Reusability: React facilitates the creation of small chunks of code called “Components”. These small codes are the specific parts of the user UI and can be repeated across several web pages. And these components can be imported easily by just writing: require(‘my-component’) and thus prevents the writing of the same code over and again. This is called “Code Reusability”. This decreases the load from product developers, also reduces the complexity in code, and provide them more time to work upon business logic and more important functions.
- Component-based structure: In React everything is treated as components. Rather than working on the whole application, developers can simply divide the difficult UI components into individual components and work on it. React focuses on individual components.
- Component-based structure: In React everything is treated as components. Rather than working on the whole application, developers can simply divide the difficult UI components into individual components and work on it. React focuses on individual components.
★ Faster because it performs optimization while compiling code to JavaScript.
★ Type-safe and most of the errors can be caught during compilation.
★ Easier and faster to write templates, if you are familiar with HTML.
Conclusion: If we look at the whole discussion, we will understand that building apps with React have gained a lot of advantages than apps build with Vanilla Javascript and that’s the reason companies like CNN, Netflix, Whatapp, Paypal are warmly welcoming this technology.
