Josh W. Comeau
What a year!
With the introduction of React Server Components, I’d say this has been the biggest year for React since 2018, when React Hooks were first introduced.
In the 5 years since 2018, Hooks have reached overwhelming adoption. A whopping 99.5% of survey respondents have adopted useState, and less than 2% are unhappy about it. Class components still exist, but they’ve been relegated to legacy codebases and the occasional error boundary component.
I wonder, though… Will we all be using Server Components 5 years after their release, in 2028? I’m not so sure. The Server Components paradigm requires deep integration with the bundler and router. It’s not something that most developers can start incrementally adopting in their current React codebase.
React developers like to keep up-to-date; 71% of survey respondents said they were using React 18, the newest version available when this data was collected. At the same time, the most widely-used React environment is still Create React App, despite being officially deprecated and not having a release since April 2022. We’ll happily update React when a new version comes out, but we’re not about to switch to a different environment; 37% of survey respondents have never even used SSR (Server Side Rendering), even though it’s been an option for over a decade now!
If I had to guess, I’d say that in 2028, there will be two Reacts in wide circulation with roughly equivalent usage. The “full-stack” version, with Server Components and Server Actions, and the client-only Single Page App version.
We live in interesting times! I’m excited to see how React and its ecosystem evolves over the coming years. ❤️