The days of keeping up your business administration in countless spreadsheets and documents now seem like distant memories due to the fast-paced growth in technologies. At Octopus, we adopted the best technologies to allow our clients to get the most out of their businesses by providing fast applications with optimal user experiences by using a program called React.

What is React

React is a UI development library based on the JavaScript language. It provides developers the ability to seamlessly create interactive user interfaces (UIs) and user experiences(UXs) in a component-based fashion and a declarative application programming interface (API). In a recent survey by Stack Overflow (a public platform used to learn and share coding knowledge), React came out on top as the most popular and favorite web framework. In the following sections, we described the benefits of React in more detail.

 

Declarative API

The declarative nature of React helps us create and improve large scale applications whilst optimizing performance, maintainability and scalability. React is written in JSX, which is a syntax extension to JavaScript. In code, it describes what the UI should look like and results in React “elements”. These elements can be used or combined to build the UI, which is performant and easy to understand for developers.

 

The declarative API of React is enabled by the Virtual DOM (Document Object Model), which is a programming concept where a virtual representation of a UI is kept in memory and synced with the real DOM. You tell React what state you want the UI to be in, and it makes sure the DOM matches that state. This makes interactions and changes made by the end user load very efficiently as it will only update parts of the application that involve changes, which is great for UX as the user does not have to reload the full application.

 

Component-based

Every design or element in an application is component-based, which makes it reusable and testable. This makes it easy for developers to implement new features and predict the behavior of the application by means of functional or class components.

 

At Octopus, we like to create and ensure consistency throughout our applications using a Design System, which is an efficient way of managing and implementing web designs. We think inconsistencies are disadvantageous to the UX, which can be prevented by combining design and development in a component-based fashion.

 

Large community

React has a community of millions of developers. It is very likely that the solutions necessary for your business already exist. Otherwise, there exists extensive amounts of knowledge and support for developing new solutions. The large community makes it very efficient for us and our clients to quickly and securely implement new solutions.

 

Besides the community, these are also numerous integrations and tools to improve software created with React. From UI visualization tools through Storybook (UI component explorer), product boards (A/B testing and communication) to testing through Cypress (testing automation framework).

 

Are you interested in developing a fast and UX friendly application or project by means of React? We would love to help you out. It all starts with an idea and we help you turn it into a scalable business.