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React based Portfolios

over 6 years ago from Stephen Kempin, Front End Developer & Designer

  • Clay MacTavishClay MacTavish, over 6 years ago

    Why use React? I'd ask yourself what you want your portfolio to do rather than start with React and just build something.

    The reason I say this is because if I'm looking for a developer with React skills I'd rather see an interesting project than a simple portfolio page with a few simple components. Maybe your portfolio page is an application?

    17 points
    • Adam RasheedAdam Rasheed, over 6 years ago

      Maybe its an exercise to learn how to use React?

      13 points
    • Andric ThamAndric Tham, over 6 years ago

      Because React makes it easier to reason about your webpage as a function of dynamic data (either coming in from Contentful or Firebase). It’s a better abstraction especially if you’re a designer or content creator.

      You don’t want to be messing about with Jekyll’s liquid templating tags or Handlebars or string concatenation with jQuery when you can use JSX.

      The upside is you can update your site without recompiling your code each and everytime, hook it up to external APIs, and with create-react-app you can host your site for free on Github, which is a major plus!

      4 points
      • Hamish TaplinHamish Taplin, over 6 years ago

        You can get all of that with a decent CMS (eg Craft) apart from the hosting on Github bit.

        2 points
        • Andric ThamAndric Tham, over 6 years ago

          Yes, but then you’d lose the benefits of using JSX, which could be a matter of preference, but I feel it’s still a better way of reasoning about your website.

          I’ve built things in vanilla HTML/CSS/jQuery, Jekyll, WordPress, and Webflow, and the React + Contentful combo provides the best developer experience, in my experience, because it matches how I think about this.

          By all means, go for the technology that makes you the most productive. Even if it’s not the most comfortable (because of the learning curve) to you at first.

          1 point