⚡️ The Latest In React 

🩹 an ESLint plugin to catch you misusing useEffect
A Reddit user Just dropped an ESLint plugin inspired by React’s “You Might Not Need an Effect” guide! If you’ve ever used useEffect for purely internal logic, yeah, this plugin catches that and nudges you toward cleaner, more idiomatic code. It flags effects that don’t touch external systems (like DOM or network calls) and suggests inline computations instead.

🙅 React context is not causing too many renders
React Context isn't the performance villain it’s made out to be. A lot of devs avoid it, thinking any state change will trigger a full re-render of everything under the provider, but that’s not how it works.

The real issue? Shoving unrelated state into a single context. Instead, just split your providers. Multiple smaller contexts = targeted re-renders = cleaner code. People also confuse provider re-renders with children re-renders, but {children} don’t re-render just because the provider does.

🧠 The Perfect Cursor AI setup for React and Next.js
Lean too hard on LLMs and you're vibe-coding. Refuse to touch them, and you're missing out on a massive productivity boost. Tools like Cursor are great, and I use them myself. If you're not using an AI-powered editor yet, you're leaving efficiency on the table. But Cursor alone isn’t fully optimised to be a good React developer, this guide shares a ton of settings you should tweak to optimise your IDE.

I’m curious how you guys use Cursor at the moment (if you do).

💡 Concurrent Optimistic Updates in React Query
Optimistic updates feel fast, but managing them in real apps can get messy. You’re essentially predicting the server’s behavior on the client, which works great for toggles but gets tricky with filtered lists or concurrent edits. This article dives into those edge cases, especially in React Query. Optimistic updates are powerful, but only if you handle concurrency and cache state with care.

📈 Developers Are Building Smarter with Patterns

Hundreds of devs are now deep inside Advanced Patterns React, finally learning how to build apps the way senior engineers do: with clean architecture, scalable patterns, and full confidence.

They’re mastering tRPC for end-to-end type safety, React Query for advanced caching, and TanStack Router for dynamic navigation, all inside a real monorepo with production-grade structure.

“I thought I knew React, but I did not. Not like this. Every module kept surprising me with things I didn’t even know I was missing. Like, the way you teach data prefetching with React query? Why has no one ever explained it like that before?” - Jared

If you’ve been waiting, now’s the time.

It’s not too late to join them.

🧠 AI & General Programming

😓 In a high-stress work environment, prioritize relationships
Here’s the hard truth, you’re not alone in that pressure. Everyone's stressed, everyone’s pretending not to be, and everyone's seen Office Space a few too many times. Don’t blow up. Jobs come and go, but reputations stick. Be the person people want to recommend, not “that guy” they remember snapping. Prioritize people over pressure. Deadlines fade. Relationships don’t.

💪 The power of the spread and rest syntax in JavaScript
Those three little dots (…) in JavaScript? They’re doing way more than meets the eye. Sometimes they’re copying arrays, sometimes scooping up function arguments, they're either spreading or resting, depending on context. Spread and rest share the same syntax but serve totally different roles. Mastering them makes your code cleaner, clearer, and a whole lot smarter.

📈 Getting to Staff Engineer
Stepping into a Staff Engineer role means rewiring how you work. It’s less about personal output and more about lifting up teams, tackling systemic issues, and navigating leadership dynamics. You’ll need to make your impact visible, say “no” with intention, and guide without a title to lean on.

Quick Links

• Dependency Inversion in React, Building Truly Testable Components.

• 5 tRPC Design Patterns That Scale.

• A React renderer for Three.js.

• Check out bippy, a toolkit to hack into react internals.

• Building a realtime chat app with Next.js and Vercel.

• Tanstack releases a reactive client store for building super fast apps on sync.

Comparing the Top 5 React State Management Libraries

In this video I make a comparison of React's top 5 state management libraries.

I'll break down their code, performance, and developer experience.

By the end, you'll know exactly which library works best for your specific projects, based on my honest, real-world experience with each one.