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·3 min read
How to Build a Custom Hook That Actually Earns Its Abstraction
Custom hooks are one of React's best patterns — and one of its most abused. Here's the test that tells you whether extracting a hook is genuinely useful or just indirection with a use prefix.
Alex Chen
·3 min read
The key Prop Is Not Just for Lists — Here's What You're Missing
Most React developers know key stops the "each child should have a unique key" warning. Far fewer know it's also the cleanest solution to a whole category of reset and remount bugs — no useEffect required.
Alex Chen
·5 min read
React Server Components Explained Without the Hype
React Server Components are one of the most significant shifts in React's model since hooks — and one of the most poorly explained. This is the mental model that actually makes them click, without the marketing language.
Alex Chen
·4 min read
Why I Stopped Using useEffect for Data Fetching (And What I Use Instead)
useEffect data fetching is the pattern every React tutorial teaches and almost no production codebase should use. Here's what the race conditions, missing cache, and waterfall requests look like in practice — and the tools that solve them properly
Alex Chen