Skills that a React developer must have to be efficient

For a company, having a React developer in its team of workers is vital for the design and construction of its website, due to the versatility of this Framework. We are going to delve a little into the definition and functions of this framework and thus be clear about the skills and knowledge that a React developer should have.

React is an open source library developed by a Facebook team for creating single page application user interfaces. This library was born due to a performance problem suffered by the social network application, which had been working with a typical system of links between views and data, but due to the large number of connections between both layers, the performance of the application was affected.

This problem, a very big one for the most widely used social network in the world, motivated a Facebook team to optimize the way views are rendered based on changes in the application data. They managed to solve their problem and brought React into the world.

React Features and Functions

A versatile framework, React offers several functions to its developers that set it apart from other similar technologies. The most important ones are:

Virtual DOM

React uses a virtual DOM, thus managing not to lose performance with manual manipulation of its user interface. The virtual DOM is just a virtual representation of the DOM. Every time the state of our application changes, the virtual DOM is updated instead of the real DOM. In simple words, a virtual DOM is represented as a tree. Each element is a node present in this tree, if the state of any of these changes it causes the creation of a new virtual DOM tree different from the previous one.

JavaScript XML or JSX

Having a JavaScript syntax such as JSX is one of the most useful functions of React. This allows the developer to write the building blocks in a simple and fast way, facilitating the development of the application or the website.

React Native

More than a function, React Native can be considered a framework on its own. It uses native components, facilitating the development of React in applications for Android and iOS. It transforms the React code and makes it compatible with these mobile platforms, as well as providing access to their native functions.

Declarative UI

This feature makes React code more readable and easier to correct your errors. React is the best platform to develop user interfaces focused on emotion and visual appeal, this not only for web applications but also for mobile applications.

Component-based architecture

A user interface of an application created with React is made up of several components, this allows developers to transmit data through the application without affecting the DOM. These components are crucial when deciding the application images and their interactions.

Skills that every React developer should have

HTML and CSS

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. Combined, both determine the appearance and navigation of a website. A high-level React developer should be able to work with HTML tags, write CSS selectors, understand the box model and how to reset the border box, and have an understanding of flexbox.

Git

Every React developer should have an understanding of how Git is handled and have a profile on GitHub or GitLab. Git is a distributed version control system, in its short definition. It allows you to keep track of all development needs and you can also manage all the changes made in applications, codes, websites and other information associated with the process of building a software. Knowledge of Git gives software developers the ability to better collaborate and cooperate with their coworkers.

JSX

As we already mentioned, JSX is an abstraction of React. It is vital for a developer to have knowledge of this extension of HTML. JSX can be viewed as “HTML-flavored JavaScript” if you want it to.

At Rootstack we have a team of React developers qualified to solve any technological problem that our clients present, with updated knowledge and in constant growth.

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