Proactively React
JavaScript is well known for the plethora of frameworks, libraries, and tools made available to it at a high rate of frequency. Of those frameworks, React is one of the most popular and claimed to be used by almost 10, 000 companies(thats a lot of job opportunities)! Some of the more notable tech giants include:
- Uber
- Airbnb
- Netflix
- Amazon
How To Stand Out From the Crowd
Software development is in high demand and opportunities at the reputable companies is highly competitive. As job seeking developers , we must look for all resources available to level up our game. There are so many open source resources available that theres no excuse for not stepping up your skills.
Given the title of this blog post, I’m going to be focusing primarily on development tools and libraries for React. This list is by no means comprehensive and I encourage you to do your own research to fit your needs. Here we go!
Top React Developer Tools
Create React App
If you have ever created a React App you most probably have heard of Create React App . How awesome is it that a library such as React is so widely and commonly used that someone has created boilerplate code for starting your project? Create React App doesn’t handle backend logic or databases; it just creates a frontend build pipeline, so you can use it with any backend you want. It’s that simple!
Bit
Bit is an open-source cli tool for collaborating on components across projects and repositories. You can use Bit for distributing components from a design library or project into a reusable package for use across apps. Bit makes it easier to for collaborating on UI components by allowing team members to share/maintain/synchronize isolated components from various projects.
Good for:
- Increasing code reusability
- Increasing design and development efficiency
- Increasing project’s stability
React Styleguidest
React Styleguidest is an awesome tool for styling your code. This tool allows you to interact with your code by generating a UI.
Including Styleguidest in your React projects is pretty straight forward. You can begin by creating your project with Create React App and installing webpack prior to launching StyleGuidest. Including this tool is simple:
All you have to do now is run your server with :
React Bootstrap
Bootstrap if probably one of the most popular CSS frameworks available. It essentially provides a set of CSS classes and JS functions that allow for creating amazing UI’s even as a beginner developer. You can find some really cool templates as well!
Bootstrap can be added to your project but running :
You can then add the stylesheet you need into your App.js or src/index.js files:
React Proto (UI Design)
React-proto is pretty neat, it allows the user to visualize/setup their application architecture upfront. This architecture can be ejected as application files either into a new project or a previous one or used as a starter template from any repo.
React devTools
React Dev Tools for Chrome is one of most popular tools for React development. While using the dev tools, looking at the components tabs will show you the list of components rendered on the screen as well as their subcomponents. From here you are then able to inspect or edit their state and props! Notably, the profiler tab allows you to measure app performance as well.
Not Excited Yet? Need More Motivation?
Peep this summary from the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics as of September 2020:
Notable Mentions:
PlayCode
JSFiddle
CodePen