the.com/react
The library that conquered the web by pretending the DOM doesn't exist.
means To respond to something that happens — or, in tech, the JavaScript library that builds user interfaces by re-rendering components when their data changes.
from From the Latin 're-' ('back, again') plus 'agere' ('to do, drive, act') — literally 'to act back.' English borrowed it through the language of 17th-century natural philosophy, where chemicals and forces were said to 'react' upon one another, long before feelings or front-end frameworks claimed the word. Facebook's library kept the older spirit: it acts back when your data shifts.
- origin
- Built at Facebook to fix its messy news feed
- first reaction
- Devs hated mixing HTML into JavaScript
- virtual dom
- Diffs a fake tree before touching the real one
- hooks
- 2019 update let functions ditch classes entirely
- reach
- Powers Instagram, Netflix, and countless dashboards
react library — javascript ui framework by meta, created 2013, powers facebook and millions of websites
react native — cross-platform mobile framework by meta that lets developers build ios and android apps with javascript