2021 in Review

• react-query

  190 27,869 9.1 TypeScript, JS

  Discontinued 🤖 Powerful asynchronous state management, server-state utilities and data fetching for TS/JS, React, Solid, Svelte and Vue. [Moved to: https://github.com/TanStack/query]

  

2021 was definitely the year when I started to take open source seriously. I have contributed a little to open-source before, but the turning point came at around Mai 2021, when Tanner made me an official React Query maintainer. Around the same time, I also became a maintainer for remeda, my favourite TypeScript util library.

• react-18

  139 5,173 0.0

  Workgroup for React 18 release.

  

After that, the discussion escalated a bit, as the redux team around Mark Erkison as well as react maintainers like Brian Vaughn got pulled in as well. Eventually, the discussion moved towards the React 18 Working Group, which I was later also invited to, where the hook was renamed to useSyncExternalStore, and the api was adjusted so that selector stability was no longer required.

• SurveyJS

  surveyjs.io sponsored

  Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App. With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.

  

• react-redux

  82 23,229 9.1 TypeScript

  Official React bindings for Redux

  

When react-redux released v8.0.0-alpha.0 in early October, I decided it's time to take a stab at making React Query ready for concurrent features, which will be shipped in React 18. Similar to redux, React Query has an external store that manages the cache, which components need to subscribe to. If we keep doing that with our current approach (basically, with useEffect and useState), applications might suffer from an issue called tearing, where parts of the ui might display outdated values.

• zustand

  248 42,308 8.9 TypeScript

  🐻 Bear necessities for state management in React

  

For the second half of the year, I kept an eye on React 18, the Working group, and how some changes would affect me as a user of React as well as a library maintainer. My probably biggest "contribution" in terms of impact in 2021 happened when I asked an innocent looking question to Dasishi Kato, author of the state manager zustand, on Twitter:

• Gatsby

  356 55,000 9.4 JavaScript

  The best React-based framework with performance, scalability and security built in.

  

For 2022, I really want to rewrite my blog, and go away from gatsby towards either next.js or remix.run - or whichever framework will be all the rage next year. I don't want to do this because I'm unsatisfied with gatsby (I'm not), but more so for the technical challenge and to keep up-to-date with the latest developments on how to build stuff.

• Plausible Analytics

  304 18,213 9.8 Elixir

  Simple, open source, lightweight (< 1 KB) and privacy-friendly web analytics alternative to Google Analytics.

  

For my blog, I only have comparable metrics for the last 3 months, because I switched hosting provider and later analytics provider during the year. I am now with netlify and I'm using plausible.io for analytics, and I'm supper happy with both.

• Next.js

  2,040 120,313 10.0 JavaScript

  The React Framework

  

For 2022, I really want to rewrite my blog, and go away from gatsby towards either next.js or remix.run - or whichever framework will be all the rage next year. I don't want to do this because I'm unsatisfied with gatsby (I'm not), but more so for the technical challenge and to keep up-to-date with the latest developments on how to build stuff.

• WorkOS

  workos.com sponsored

  The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  

Suggest a related project