redux VS styled-components

Redux

redux - Redux is a key tool used in managing state across an application. This can be used with any web technology including React, Vue and Angular docs

Redux is a client-state library.

react-redux: A powerhouse for efficient state management and data flow control. Learn more

Reducer-based: requires dispatching actions to update a big centralised state, often called a “single source of truth”. In this group, we have Redux and Zustand.

I am _thrilled_ to announce that:

Redux Toolkit 2.0 is LIVE!!!

- https://github.com/reduxjs/redux-toolkit/releases/tag/v2.0.0

This major version has new features, faster perf, smaller bundle size, and removes deprecated options.

It's accompanied by majors for all our Redux family packages

## RTK 2.0:

- a new `combineSlices` method for lazy-loading reducers - Updates to `createSlice` to include a `selectors` field and allow defining thunks inside

- Immer 10 w/ faster updates

- Removal of deprecated options

See the migration guide:

- https://redux.js.org/usage/migrations/migrating-rtk-2

All of the Redux libraries now have modernized packaging with full ESM/CJS compat. They also ship modern JS (no transpiling for IE11), which means smaller bundle sizes.

We've also done byte-shaving work to shrink the bundles (extracting error messages, de-duping imports)

## Redux core 5.0:

- The TS conversion we did in 2019!

- Action types _must_ be strings

- `UnknownAction` as the default action type

- Better preloaded state types

- Internal subscription improvements

- Still marks `createStore` as deprecated!

- https://github.com/reduxjs/redux/releases/tag/v5.0.0

## React-Redux 9.0:

- *Now requires React 18 and RTK 2.0 / Redux 5.0*

DEV is a Rails monolith, which uses Preact in the front-end using islands architecture. The reason why I mention all this is that it's not a full-stack JavaScript application, and there is no state management library like Redux or Zustand in use. The data store, for the most part on the front end, is all data attributes.

Oh hey, that's my post!

(yes I spend too much time refreshing HN :) )

FWIW I did end up with a packaging combination that seems to work sufficiently. I never did fix the "FalseCJS" issue that `are-the-types-wrong` is detecting. I played with double-emitting TS typedefs, and the `tsup` tool _does_ actually have support for that now (added by Andrew Branch from the TS team). So it might be more feasible now. But ultimately I decided I was tired of messing with packaging setup and that what I've got is good enough. (hopefully)

We're actually about to launch Redux Toolkit 2.0 and Redux 5.0 this week, assuming the last couple pieces come together. Here's the latest RCs - you can see the current `package.json` files in there:

- https://github.com/reduxjs/redux-toolkit/releases/tag/v2.0.0...

- https://github.com/reduxjs/redux/releases/tag/v5.0.0-rc.1

CSS-in-JS is a styling technique wherein CSS is composed using JavaScript instead of defined in external files. This method allows CSS to be scoped locally to components rather than globally, reducing the probability of style conflicts. Utilizing JavaScript also enables dynamic styling easily aligned with the component's state or props. Libraries like Styled Components and Emotion are popular choices in the React ecosystem for adopting this method.

In 2023, I had a chat with Max Stoiber, CEO of Stellate, on a podcast to learn about his early success on GitHub. His first open-source project, react-boilerplate/react-boilerplate, gained a whopping 10k stars in just one weekend after appearing on the homepage of Hacker News. This success led Max to drop out of university and create several other popular open-source projects, including styled-components. This library accelerates the process of building styles in React components.

Embracing the styled-components library allows developers to write actual CSS code to style their components. It utilizes tagged template literals to style components, enabling a seamless integration of styles within the component's JavaScript file. This approach eliminates the mapping between components and styles, thus enhancing developer productivity and component reusability.

styled-components: Allows for maintainable styling with CSS-in-JS. Learn more

Over the past few years, I've worked with React apps utilising various CSS-in-JS libraries, starting with styled-components, transitioning through emotion, Theme UI, and finally Stitches. I've also integrated MUI, Mantine, and Chakra in numerous client projects.

There are several alternatives to MUI. shadcn/ui is a modern alternative that is very popular. Ant Design is also a great alternative. Charkra UI can also be used as a UI Framework. Some people suggest just using styled components. Some use Tailwind CSS. Yet, for both styled components and Tailwind CSS, one still writes a lot of CSS. This might not provide the best developer experience compared to using a UI Framework, especially if we aim to avoid designing all the pages on the website.

Website: Styled Components

The project is build using several ready made components available within, Mantine. It’s a fully featured React components library. However some places still use some custom CSS-in-JS so we used some good ol’ styled components.