Trust the Framework: Balancing React Performance and Productivity

In the React community, there’s often a buzz around re-renders. But here’s the thing: re-renders aren’t inherently bad. In fact, React’s fundamental design is built upon the concept of re-rendering components when state or props change. The official React documentation emphasizes: <blockquote> “React provides a declarative API so that you don’t have to worry about exactly what changes on every update… When you use React, you’re essentially working with a tree of React elements. On every state or props update, especially with the use of hooks in functional components, a re-render is triggered to reflect the most recent tree.” </blockquote> In my journey with React, I’ve observed that it’s not the re-renders themselves that can be problematic, but how we manage and optimize them. React is designed with re-renders in mind, and its efficient diffing algorithm ensures that only the necessary updates are made to the DOM. Now, I’m not saying you should ignore performance. But it’s essential to understand that not all re-renders are costly. I’ve spent days upon days sifting through profiling data and much more trying to optimize lagging applications. In my experience, React’s virtual DOM does an excellent job of minimizing actual DOM updates, making many re-renders virtually free in terms of performance. <a href="https://javascript.plainenglish.io/trust-the-framework-balancing-react-performance-and-productivity-92c4c28c0e0a">Website</a>