React or React.js is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. React enables users to create interactive UIs.
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Supabase
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Supabase is an Open Source Firebase Alternative from the company of the same name in Singapore. Every Supabase project is a dedicated PostgreSQL database. Supabase also provides an open source Object store with unlimited scalability, for any file type. Supports open source authentication, with every Supabase project coming with a complete User Management system that works without any additional tools.
React is a JavaScript user interface construction library that works well for:
Developing web apps with dynamic and complicated user interfaces.
creating reusable UI elements that may be used in other applications.
creating single-page applications with dynamic content updates that don't require a page reload.
The Virtual DOM's effective updating mechanism allows it to handle large volumes of data updates.
React, on the other hand, might be less suitable for:
Websites that are simple, stagnant, and have no interaction. Other libraries or simple HTML, CSS, and JavaScript may be a better fit in such circumstances.
Web sockets may be a better choice for applications that need real-time updates, such as chat or gaming apps.
When creating mobile apps, React Native is a better option.
Server side rendering only, as React is designed to run on the client side.
Supabase can be used for strong custom backends for games and full-stack web applications. Self-hosting is not as great of an option just yet, and Supabase is still being developed actively so there are still legitimate problems that can be encountered, but this project seems to be going in a positive direction and has been useful for us.
React is fantastic for building performant user interfaces. Our web app is snappy and great for our customers.
React has the philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well which is the view layer of the application. This makes it incredibly intuitive and flexible for developers to use.
React has lead the way in being able to write modular and structured code. It is a drastic improvement since the days of spaghetti jQuery code.
React has an unmatched community. The amount of tools and libraries available is fantastic, and there plenty of solutions available online for common problems.
Debugging React is challenging. Bugs in react code generate stack traces internal to React and it is often totally unclear how it relates to the code you actually wrote.
Relating your React elements to corresponding DOM elements is difficult. The intentional separation of virtual and actual DOM also makes it difficult to map the elements to the structures in the DOM. This is partially ameliorated by the use of the React dev tool, which provides a DOM-like view of the React elements, but the tool still does not provide a direct correspondence with the DOM that is often necessary to figure out why something isn't right.
Because JSX is React-specific and not a language feature, a special compilation process is necessary to convert JSX code to normal JS. Coming from a C++ background, compiling things doesn't bother me, but many JS developers are used to a less structured development.
React is just a bit of a different animal. I was avoiding it for the longest time. I thought for sure I would land on Vue or something else with a more approachable and familiar appearance. But after taking an online course in React, I started realize what people were raving about (and complaining about) and decided to implement it at our office for one of our products.
It still takes some ability to be able to use all the features, but you may not need to use all the features. Even though a lot of Supabase is straightforward, you will still want experienced backend developers working with this tech. I wouldn't recommend having frontend specialists deal with this much.
Since it's open-source and very popular, the community support for React and related tools and libraries is excellent. There are a lot of people using the same tools, and so issues tend to get fixed quickly and "recipes" are easy to come by. And since it's backed by Facebook, they have a dedicated engineering team working on the progression of React.
While this is a widely contested debate with various blog posts and benchmarks all over the place, its really a personal choice to determine what works for the team. Coming from a Angular 1.x background, I decided to try a new framework when Angular 2.x was announced and at that time React is gaining popularity and Vue hasn't taken off yet. Compared to Angular 1.x and Vue (hybrid of React and Angular) that split the logic from the html templates, I loved the way React breaks code into components using the jsx syntax. In my mind, this allows for cleaner components and easier maintenance
The extent of the options offered by Supabase far exceeded other similar products we've tried in the past. Also, their documentation has been excellent for us. Self-hosting is not what it's cracked up to be, but that's usually the case with these kinds of tools, anyway. I don't know anyone else I've talked to about Supabase who self-hosts, either. For something super micro small, Pocketbase is genuinely self-hostable, but it's been best for prototypes and proofs-of-concept, perhaps not with something expecting a lot of users. That's where Supabase's scalability and flexibility become more valuable.
