For years, I watched React take over the web—from the sidelines. 🤔
Like many working on large-scale applications, my team at the time relied on jQuery while transitioning to TypeScript, focusing on native browser capabilities that were evolving rapidly. Instead of adopting React, we built a custom TypeScript framework for the Microsoft Learn site—one that prioritized performance and accessibility.
That framework served us well. But being opinionated and custom, it required extensive training, and as more teams contributed UI code, the challenges multiplied.
Fast-forward to January of this year, and I was preparing to join Stripe as the Engineering Team Lead for Stripe Docs—a highly dynamic React-based site.
I was excited. But also aware: 👉 I had never worked deeply with React before. 👉 I had some biases against it.
I initially saw React as a tool that led to quick, flashy UI responses—often at the cost of user experience, with infinite loading spinners and unnecessary re-renders.
I was wrong.
React, at its core, is a powerful library. Like any tool, it’s only as good as how you use it.
To ramp up in a smaller, more controlled environment, I built this blog from scratch.
I even seeded the blog with some old memories pulled from various social media platforms. Part of this project is my attempt to de-platform and consolidate my content in one place.
This journey has been eye-opening. React is far more powerful than I initially gave it credit for, and Remix brings an incredible developer experience on top of it.
You can officially call me a convert—I ❤️ React.