React’s gone full wild west! No more stable updates, just experimental features. Seems like it’s hitched its wagon to nextjs and other frameworks. It’s still the main player, but now it’s more of a sidekick to full stack apps. Kinda strange, but maybe it’s the new normal. ππ€
π Confusing Signals
Do you remember the times when we had react conferences or blog posts that would introduce or explore new ideas or features and then at some point we would get a new react version that includes those features? Do you remember how it was when hooks were introduced with react version 16.8? Well, it seems like those times are over, at least right now. If you take a look at the react releases, you will see that at least at the point of time where I’m recording this, the last stable release has been almost 2 years ago.
π Shifting Landscape
It’s not like there wouldn’t have been any development on react since then. Quite the opposite. One main shift in the react ecosystem would be towards building full stack applications with react. We now have nextjs version 14 which added stable support for Server actions. This was essentially a missing building block to build complete fullstack react applications without any separate API or separate API endpoints.
| Main Shifts in React Ecosystem 2024 |
|---|
| Full-stack development |
| Next.js version 14 support |
π οΈ The New Strategy
React seems to be taking a direction where it’s primarily meant to be used by Frameworks and not standalone. The new docs that were launched last year kind of proved that, as the recommendation for getting started with react is to get started with a framework like nextjs instead of just spinning up a basic react project or even using Create react app as we did in the past.
| React Strategy |
|---|
| Primarily for Frameworks use |
| Nextjs recommendation |
π React’s Role
The reality is different. There are plenty of projects out there that are just using react, building a single-page application with react, for example. Nonetheless, it seems that the last stable release has been some time ago, and there is now following a different release strategy. Their idea is to have Canary releases and experimental releases, which are new versions of react primarily meant to be used by Frameworks that build upon react.
| New React Release Strategy |
|---|
| Canary and experimental releases |
| Primarily for Framework use |
π React’s Future
The strategy with react, at least right now, is to focus on its capabilities as a framework dependency instead of a standalone library. The react team describes that they’re pursuing this strategy so that they can release new stable features that might depend on some unstable features, which they couldn’t do if they would release it on the stable branch where all the features have to be stable.
| Focus on Framework Dependency |
|---|
| New stable features released via new strategy |
π€ Final Thoughts
In conclusion, working with react is still a great idea. It’s popular and you need to know it if you want to use it with nextjs or another full-stack framework. Still, these recent developments are a bit weird. Maybe, though, it’s just a new normal we have to get used to.
Key Takeaways
- React’s last stable release has been almost 2 years ago.
- The documentation now recommends starting with a framework like nextjs.
- A new strategy involving Canary and experimental releases is being followed.
- The strategy with react is to focus on its capabilities as a framework dependency instead of a standalone library.
FAQ
Q: Is it recommended to start learning react with just the standalone library?
A: While there are plenty of projects and jobs that need just react, the new strategy seems to focus on its capabilities as a framework dependency.
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