The Generations of React

React has been around for over a decade, and how you first learned it shapes how you code today. Anisha Malde (Developer Evangelist at Amazon) explores the “generations of React” and how different learning journeys influence developer habits and best practices.

▪ The Class Component Generation: understanding lifecycle methods and the discipline of explicit structure.

▪ The Hooks Generation: learning React post-2020 with new flexibility, but also new pitfalls like overusing `useEffect` and `useMemo`.

▪ The Compiler Generation: a new wave of developers leaning on AI and compiler optimizations, sometimes without grasping fundamentals.

▪ How differences in starting points affect state management choices, library preferences, and performance trade-offs.

▪ Why knowing the fundamentals of React’s lifecycle and mental models makes you more effective; especially on constrained devices like Fire TV.

Whether you started with classes, hooks, or compilers, this talk is a reminder that fundamentals never go out of style.