Why you should use Kotlin for android development?

Java is the most widely used language for Android development, however that doesn’t mean it is consistently the best choice. Java is old, error-prone, and has been slow to modernize. Kotlin is a better alternative. OpenJDK developers are starting to cross over any barrier with Java 8, however Android doesn’t use every feature of Java 8. Developers are still stuck in the old Java 7 and 6 worlds, and that won’t improve much in the near future. Here the Kotlin comes in: This new open source language, based on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). 

There are other JVM languages you could attempt to use on Android, however Kotlin offers integrations with Android Studio, Google’s primary IDE for Android, that no language, has, other than Java. Here’s why now is the time to start using this modern, advanced, pragmatic language for your Android development projects.

Reasons to use Kotlin for android development-

Kotlin for Android

1. Language and environment are mature-

Unlike languages like Swift, the Kotlin release has gone through numerous stages before releasing the final 1.0 release. This implies there are hardly any issues when working with Kotlin, everything works as you would expect. The IDE plugin works easily, and allows a significant number of the features that you love and use in Java. Therefore, working with Kotlin is great in that sense. It’s interesting to know that before its last version, the language spent several years in alpha and afterward in beta. And, that even before the beta came out, there were people using it in real projects.

2. It makes Android development much easier-

Kotlin is simplicity with power, so you have a new world of possibilities in case you’re coming from Java that you couldn’t think. We genuinely believe it’s the only viable option to Java for developing great applications on Android. Different options, for example, Scala are tremendously heavy, and compilation times and tools can’t be compared. Compilation times in Kotlin today are like Java (in certain tests it appeared to be significantly faster), and the library required to write Kotlin Apps is extremely small, so it won’t increase your method count that much.

3. It’s seamlessly integrated with Android Studio-

It might sound senseless, yet everything working so pleasant since first moment is an advantage. You’ve just observed it if you’ve tried, however you can have a Kotlin project set up and ready to work in less than 10 minutes with no issues, regardless of whether you know nothing about Kotlin. With Android 2.3 you simply need to install a plugin, and in 3.0 the entire process will be consistently integrated. Furthermore, from that point everything works simply like if you were working with Java: you can run from the IDE, debug without issues, do refactors, use instant run. Everything you can imagine is still there and can be utilized.

4. Its evolution is well covered-

Jetbrains is the organization behind Kotlin. They are using it in their own projects, so they’re more than interested in further developing it. Likewise, specifically discussing Android, now with Google support, we have two huge organizations working together to bring the best language and tools to our development environment. From features like Kotlin Android Extensions, to libraries like Anko, continuous library size optimizations and build times, everything shows that Jetbrains is putting a lot of effort into Android.

5. It’s much safer than Java-

In reality most of developers are truly disappointed, because it’s a major issue in the design of the language itself. We won’t deny that today we have tools like annotations, or some design patterns, that can help us avoid part of them. But as usual, the amount of extra work needed is an issue in time and money. In any case, we can’t just discuss about nulls. The entire amount of code we save on Kotlin returns to:

• Less errors: If there is less code,less chances of errors, and therefore becomes more stable.
• When the compiler helps you to detect those errors at compile time, they never happen on runtime .
• The code is easier to understand when another person understands it and, again, it’s more difficult to introduce errors.
• It’s more clear what the code does (and not how), since we avoid any standard that only serve to overcome the lacks of the language. 

Definitely, it translates into more work done in less time, more stability, and less time spent in fixing bugs.

6. Kotlin is multi-platform-

It was first created with JVM in mind, so it can virtually be used on any devices that can run the JVM. But, in Kotlin 1.1, Kotlin JS was finally released, so you can also do front-end development using Kotlin. Also you’re able to write your Gradle files in It.

7. It’s very easy to learn-

Best advantages of Kotlin is that a Java developer can understand the greater part of the code without ever having written a line of Kotlin. This is because Jetbrains users were worried that the transition from Java was simple, with a language that closely looks like to what you already know. Because of the simplicity of the language and the help of the IDE and the compiler, you can deal with the basics of the language really fast. From that point, the only more complex part is to understand the concepts that Java lacks, instead of the Kotlin syntax itself. I don’t think anyone needs more than 15 days to feel comfortable writing code in it.

Conclusion-

Kotlin is a friendly language to start with and extremely interesting. It will spread your mind and make you think different and, most importantly, it’s ready to be used in. Also, it’s now an official language for Android development! You can compare Kotlin with Java at- Kotlin vs Java and Kotlin with React native at- Kotlin vs React Native.

If you’re still confused to choose Kotlin for development, you can consult with Solace Experts team. Well experienced experts are here to help you for choosing the best platform for android development. Develop your best software with Solace for better performance.

Python vs C#: Which one to choose?

Python is an open- source, general purpose programming language that powers sites, for example, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram. Python was one of the first technology stacks Google used to develop its search engine  with. It’s one of the most prominent languages today, which finds great use in recent development trends, for example, machine learning. Know the uses of Python in AI, analytics at- Using Python in Finance, Analytics and Artificial Intelligence

On the other hand, C# was developed by Microsoft as part of .NET. It is a general purpose programming language designed for the common language infrastructure. Both Python and C# are object- oriented, yet while C# is completely object-oriented. Developers can use Python to write procedural code as well. Besides, Python is a dynamically- interpreted language, while C# is a statically- typed compiled language. That implies the C# software will outperform Python in applications, for example, game engines but won’t beat Python’s fast development time. Let us see Python vs C#.

Python vs C#-

1. Free vs. paid

In contrast to C#, which is a part of the Microsoft universe, Python is open-source and freely accessible. C# is managed by Microsoft and takes advantage of its immense and resourceful ecosystem. Python is generally based on the efforts of its energetic community, which keeps up many open-source initiatives to allow the language to advance. If you’re running on a limited budget and Python has all you have to build your product, it’s a more cost-effective choice than C#.

2. Support-

Since C# operates in the Microsoft solutions ecosystem system, you may choose to pay a premium to ensure that developers get help from Microsoft specialists whenever it’s required. Developers coding in Python can just count on the Python community– which is extremely useful and passionate, yet can’t ensure a similar level of support.

3. Ease of use-

Developers like C# due to its design and origin in the object-oriented  programming paradigm. Those who had experience in Java can choose it rapidly- and it’s a smart decision if they need to develop applications for Microsoft’s platform because C# is deeply integrated with the .NET framework.

There are a few things developers can get done a lot faster with Python, mostly because it’s a dynamically typed language. The basic syntax of Python requires knowledge of fewer language constructions, while in C#,  you can’t just write a program without realizing what compilation, assemblies, namespaces, classes, and methods are. It’s simpler to learn Python iteratively. Developers can use an increasing number of features as they go deeper into the language. In C#, that is impossible. Developers need to adapt much more before they write their first line of code. 

4. Tools-

To write in C#, developers should know specific tools, for example, Visual Studio .NET, Far, Redgate .NET Reflector, IIS, and so on. Python developers can get away with Vim/Emacs together with some standard Unix tools. In general, Python developers can take advantage of  simpler, but more generic development tools.

5. Dynamic vs. static-

Python is a more dynamic language than C#. With regards to dynamic languages, the development process is rapid and simple. That is the reason they require the expertise of a team leader, who will analyse the process to ensure that developers build a robust and scalable application. Since C# is a static language, it includes a build/ compile step, which a few developers aren’t fond of. The build process adds a stage to the whole development procedure and impacts its efficiency. But, the compiler also recognizes syntax errors before they become an issue.

6. Performance-

C# may beat Python in execution, however since it doesn’t run on open-source technologies, it removes these gains at the cost of infrastructure software. C# may take less server resources for a similar volume of concurrent users than Python, however you’ll be paying Microsoft for these servers anyway.

Developers can improve Python’s performance with PyPy’s implementation of the JIT compiler. Writing and deploying code in C# is slower than in Python– the latter is known for its fast development process, which it owes to its elegant syntax, dynamic nature, and the accessibility of libraries of pre-written code for simple reuse. With everything taken into account, developers are more productive in Python’s environment.

Python or C#? Which one to choose?

If your project relies upon high speed and performance, Python will be the ideal decision. It is easy to learn. It offers choices for smooth cross-platform development, and provides developers with a wealth of useful open-source libraries that accelerate the development process. If your project requires great Microsoft integration, top execution, and dependence on a standard syntax and libraries, C# is a superior decision.

Final Words-

These are some key points of Python vs C#. There can be few also. From these points you can easily choose the best between Python and C#. If you are still confused, consult with solace experts and get to know the best one according to your project requirements. We will be happy to help you through our experts team.

Tips and Tricks for Effective Chatbot Development

Chatbots have surprised the marketing industry. They are offering AI powered technology to companies, allowing them to give more developed customer care. Unlike popular thinking, chatbot development isn’t a hard task that costs more. To assist you with your chatbot making tasks, we’ve listed out the advantages of implementing a chatbot into your business and also tips for creating an effective chatbot.

The benefits of implementing a chatbot-

Chatbot Development

The genuine question is, why would it be a good idea for you to jump on the chatbot? The answer is simple. Chatbots are a cheap and also effective way for you to automate certain day-to-day tasks, allowing you to focus your resources on the operational aspects of your business. Adding chatbots to your marketing will benefit you because they are generally new and can be incorporated directly into your social media efforts. Chatbots allow you to:

• Build brand awareness.
• Boost your sales.
• Increase your lead generation.
• More conveniently reach your audience.
• Answer your customers’ queries.
• Send targeted content based on data gathered from conversations.
• Monetize your social media pages.

Chatbot development isn’t difficult, however creating one that is functional and unique can be challenging. The below tips will help you to create a chatbot that addresses your audience and also conveys the messages that you initially intended. It also helps you to push your audience through your sales efficiently. You can also refer chatbot development platforms at- Top 10 Best Platforms for Chatbot Development.

Tips and Tricks for Chatbot development-

1. Use a chatbot-making platform-

The simplest method to create a completely functioning chatbot is to use a platform, for example, Chattypeople. Chattypeople is a chatbot building platform for entrepreneurs and also businesses as it requires no programming knowledge. You should simply sign up to the website and link your account to your Facebook profile. Some of chatbot tools advantages include:

• You can push offers and deals to customers on demand
• Chatbot tools recognizes variations of your keywords
• It integrates with all the major payment systems
• It supports numerous CMS platforms and business categories

2. Define your goals and expectations-

Overloading your chatbot with features will probably set you up for failure. There is no point in trying to get your chatbot to master each task from the get go. Designing your chatbot with the goal that it can master one task to its full capability is much better than having a chatbot that can attempt 5 to 10 tasks indifferently. Keep in mind, people need quality, not quantity.

3. Give your chatbot a unique name-

When thinking about a name consider your chatbot marketing. An ever increasing number of organizations are implementing chatbots, and if yours doesn’t have a unique name, it won’t be found on the web. Giving your chatbot a remarkable name will ensure your customers can search for it effectively.

4. Approach your customers with your bot-

Chatbots are still extremely complicated to most people. So approaching your customers straightforwardly will generate more conversations and leave them with a positive experience interacting with your brand. When designing your chatbot, you have to:

• Create an effective greetings message.
• Tell your customers how you can help them with a welcome message.
• Use buttons on your Facebook page and website.

5. Create a natural conversation flow-

Ensure that your bot is conversational! Conversational bots make the healthy interaction between your chatbot and your audience. This helps you to understand your customer’s needs better and gather important data. The general purpose of your bot is to answer your audience’s inquiries. Hence, be sure to not get in the discussion, despite facilitate it.

6. Start small and simple-

Also to keep its functionalities limited in its beginnings, it is significant that you:

• Keep its communications simple and understandable.
• Remember that your bot is representing your brand and products.

Your bot is at present in its earliest stages; it doesn’t need to pretend to be something that it is not. By keeping your bot small and straightforward, you can learn from your audience’s behavior and slowly develop new versions with more functionalities.

7. Evaluate and optimize your bot regularly-

As mentioned above, you will extend your bot’s functionalities by creating new and improved versions. All things considered, a chatbot is a powerful marketing tool. It should be consistently evaluated and optimized. Since the technology surrounding chatbots is still reasonably new, it is still introducing  new features. At the point when you evaluate your chatbot, you have to:

• Determine what you need to optimize it for
• Focus on optimizing your chatbot according to your goals
• Establish the best ways in which you can drive your audience to your desired outcome

8. Unveil one feature at a time-

Beside the way that you need to perfect each one of your chatbot’s features independently before introducing them to the world, it would also be overwhelming for your audience to be faced with that much information in one go. For more impact, unveil one feature at a time, when clients need them.

9. Figure out which data you want to gather-

Chatbots are an important information gathering tool. This returns to defining objectives. Consider the information you’d prefer to gather from your audience, and tailor your chatbot’s conversation flow to ask the correct inquiries to acquire this information. For instance, you could:

• if you need to know their location, ask for your customers’ zip code
• Gather key learnings about their shopping preferences to push significant information in your next interaction with them.
• Ask them about their eating, shopping, or exercise habits to push the correct offers and promotions to them later on.

10. Stay up-to-date with your competitors-

Chatbots are new means there is still opportunity for improvement. The most ideal approach to learn is by observing your competitors’ progress. To do this, start tracking:

• Things they are doing well that you could implement into your own chatbot strategy.
• Things they are doing badly so that you don’t make the same mistakes and improve this in your case.
• Any innovative features they are using that you don’t know.

Final Words-

Introducing a simple, easy to use, effectively available, and efficient chatbot is the best way to reach your audience. Not just this, by giving them a conversational chatbot that has a bit of personality you can be sure they’ll be returning for more. These are some tips and tricks that you can use for effective chatbot development.

Do you need a chatbot for your business website? You can connect with Solace team and consult for appropriate chatbot development. Expert’s team is well proficient in chatbot development trends. Develop your business chatbot with Solace as it gives a success you deserves.

Most Common Mistakes To Avoid In React Development

Some mistakes have become common among developers working on React applications. These mistakes might be the result of an oversight, pressure to meet a deadline, or an absence of experience with React/JavaScript. Here you came to know with some common mistakes that you should avoid in react development.

Most common mistakes to avoid in react development–

1. Not creating enough components-

One mistake that React developers frequently make is that they don’t create enough components. Generally, there are two different ways of writing applications: putting everything in one place (monolith), or partitioning everything into smaller pieces (micro-services). To build this dashboard effectively with the use of React, we have to consider it as a set of components that form a page instead of an entire page itself. That way, we can create various sets of components that — when assembled — make up the entire page. This technique saves your time, however it also saves you a lot of stress while debugging since you’ll instantly know which component is associated with each error.

2. Writing logic in components-

While looking for an appropriate method to create components for reusability, the presentational and container component creation pattern is often one of the first to appear.

Presentational components are related with how things look, while container components are related with how things work. A common mistake you’ll see in React applications is that presentation markup and application logic are fused into one component. The drawback of this approach is that you cannot easily reuse any of the components or logic without copying and pasting. If you use the presentational and creation pattern, you can achieve reusability of both the markup and logic more effectively. You can also make UI changes without messing up the behavior.

Let us see the components below:

This is a component that is just needed to get data from props and show it. It is a presentational component.

const Books = props => (
  <ul>
    {props.books.map(book => (
      <li>{book}</li>
    ))}
  </ul>
)

This books component manages and stores its own data, and uses the presentational component books above to show it.

class BooksContainer extends React.Component {
  constructor() {
    this.state = {
      books: []
    }
  }

  componentDidMount() {
    axios.get('/books').then(books =>
      this.setState({ books: books }))
    )
  }

  render() {
    return <Books books={this.state.books} />
  }
}

3. Mutating state variables

Mutation is the ability to change something. Consider the following state:

const person = {
   name : "John",
   gender  : "Male",
}

If you create a new variable in your application at some point and assign the person object to it with the aim of changing it, you might be shocked by the result:

const newPerson = person
newPerson.name = "Jane"
newPerson.gender  = "Female"

If you attempt to log both the person and newPerson object, you’ll see that both now reflect the most recent value that was set. This frequently clarifies unusual component behavior. To solve this, you can use the .slice() method or the ES6 spread administrator ES6 spread operator.

However, the best approach is immutability. You can either implement it yourself, or use Immutable.js and immutability-helper, which is recommended by the React team.

4. Not using absolute paths-

If you have ever worked on a React application that has numerous components, images, CSS files, and other files, you’ll agree that importing files from various directories can be tedious. Commonly, we’ll import files this way:

../../../importone.js
../../../importtwo.js

We have seen that it isn’t neat, and changing the directory of a file will cause the import to fail. With the release of Create React App 3, we would now be able to utilize absolute import paths. To do this, create a jsconfig.json file in your root directory with the following:

// jsconfig.json
{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "baseUrl": "src"
  },
  "include": ["src"]
}

Now, you can import your files this way:

import React from 'react';
import { LINKS } from 'helpers/constants';
import Button from 'components/Button/Button';

function App() {
  return (
    <>
      <Button>
        This is my button
      </Button>

      <a href={LINKS.ABOUT}>About Us</a>
    </>
  );
}
export default App;

Not only is this cleaner, however it also implies you don’t have to update the way in your code after changing the location of a file. Get familiar with CRA V3 here.

5. Not using key on a listing component-

We regularly run into situations where we would need to render a list of things. The code seems to be like this:

const lists = ['one', 'two', 'three'];

render() {
  return (
    <ul>
      {lists.map(listNo =>
        <li>{listNo}</li>)}
    </ul>
  );
}

For smaller applications, this may work. When working with enormous lists, you’ll run into render issues when you attempt to modify or delete an item from the list.

react monitors each of the list elements on the DOM. Without it, it would not know what has changed in the list item. To fix that, you have to add a key to all your list elements like below:

<ul>
  {lists.map(listNo =>
    <li key={listNo}>{listNo}</li>)}
</ul>

6. Not writing unit tests-

This is one of the most well-known mistakes out there. It’s frequently overlooked because applications can still technically work without unit tests. A unit test enables you to test parts of your application freely to ensure a specific functionality works as expected.

For example, you can write a unit test to check if a prop went to a component was rendered on the browser. You may wonder why you’d write such a small test. Some of the time you expect your prop should show appropriately after writing your components, yet occasionally a conflicting CSS style may block it from displaying. 

Writing a unit test saves you the time you’d spend finding that bug by pointing it out immediately. They assist you with debugging rapidly across your application.

7. Not using prop-types-

We regularly observe incorrect data types being passed around in applications. For instance, say you need to pass a number 2 by means of props to another component. Frequently, you’d see it done like this:

<MyComponent value="2" />

This sends the value 2 to MyComponent as a string rather than a number. To send it as a number, write it like follow:

<MyComponent value={2}/>

Defining the types via the prop-types package is the most reliable method for ensuring you send the correct props.

Prop-types are used to document the intended types of properties passed to components. React will check props passed to your components against those definitions, and warn in development if they don’t coordinate.

8. Not using helper classes or functions-

This is most common mistake noticed in many React applications.

Also to reusable components, we also have reusable functionalities in our applications. This functionality is frequently hardcoded on a components to component basis, which prompts inefficient and inconsistent behavior between similar components.

All container components contain logic to get a resource, save it to state, and deal with errors. Many times, this behavior is the same from one container component to another, however it can act inconsistently when not written appropriately. 

Consider the above example where we make an API call to get a resource, set the state, and also handle errors.

If we extract that behavior to a helper class or function, we can reuse a similar logic for API calls, setting state, and error handling.

9. Using Redux or Flux to manage all your application states-

In greater React applications, many developers use Redux or Flux to manage global state. This is extremely helpful, particularly when different parts of the application will benefit from having a shared state.

In any case, it’s inadvisable to utilize Redux or Flux to deal with each state in your application.

Take, for example, a form components. If we need the state of a check button to consistently be checked whenever we visit it, the best approach is to manage it using local state method or useState (for Hooks) instead of using Redux or Flux.

10. Not using React and Redux dev tools-

Applications consistently get buggy after a while. Debugging is regularly a great deal of work, since most of the time many components are involved. With React dev tools, you can assess the rendered tree of React elements, which is incredibly helpful for seeing how different components build up a page.

The Redux dev tools likewise accompany a host of features that let you see each activity that has occurred, see the state changes these actions caused, and travel back to before specific actions occurred. You can include React dev tools as either a dev dependency or as a browser extension. Using them will save you a great deal of development time.

Final words-

From these, you came to know about some common mistakes in react development. You can develop a better web solution with react by avoiding such mistakes. There can be few others also. 

Avoiding such errors can lead you to the success of a development that you deserve. If you are still facing some difficulty with react development, consult with solace experts team. Team is well proficient in new technology trends to give you the best web solution with react. We will be happy to help you.

What’s new in Node.js 12?

Node.js has been a game-changing technology from its initial release in 2009. Basically, it allows developers to use JavaScript to run scripts on the server side producing dynamic web content before the page is sent to the user’s web browser. Subsequently, Node.js represents to a “JavaScript everywhere” paradigm, unifying web web application development around a single programming language, instead of requiring various languages for server-side and client side scripts. 

On April 23rd, 2019, Node.js 12 officially launched. What’s more, let’s get straight to the point, this isn’t only a regular old version update, this is a big overhaul with some significant upgrades, let us see the list of highlights.

New features of Node.js 12-

1. V8 Engine Updated to V8 7.4-

As usual a new version of the V8 JavaScript engine brings performance changes and upgrades to Node. It was initially running on V8 .7.2 (updated on Dec 18) and eventually upgrade to 7.6 in April which included outstanding upgrades with V8 7.4 are performance updates for faster javascript execution, better memory management, and broadened ECMAScript syntax support.

Major Features of V8 version 7.4 –

JIT-less V8-

Version 7.4 allows JavaScript execution without allocating executable memory at runtime it depends heavily on the ability to allocate and modify executable memory at runtime in its default configuration and creating executable memory at runtime is a part of what makes V8 fast.

WebAssembly Threads/ Atomics shipped-

WebAssembly Threads/Atomics are now enabled on non-Android operating systems which allows the use of different cores on a user’s machine via  WebAssembly, enabling new, computation-heavy use cases on the web.

Faster calls with arguments mismatch-

JavaScript engines must give an approach to get to the actual parameters. In V8 this is done by means of arguments adaption, which provides the actual parameters in case of under or over-application. In the most recent version, V8 now totally skips arguments adaption, reducing call overhead by up to 60%.

Check out More of the v8.7.4 New Features Below:

• Improved native accessor performance
• Parser performance
• Bytecode flushing in memory
• Bytecode dead basic block elimination
• JavaScript language features include Private class fields
• Hashbang grammar
• V8API

2. ES6 Module Support-

The import/export syntax has become the most favorite module syntax for developers since its standardization in ES6, and the Node team has been working on it to enable natively. Generally all major browsers support ECMAScript modules by means of  -Types of import from ES modules files for phase 3 that will work with all built-in Node packages:

// default exports
import module from 'module'
// named exports
import { namedExport } from 'module'
// namespace exports
import * as module from 'module'

Phase 3 for ECAM Script Modules in Node 12 which correspond to a way to the stability of the modules and the plan is to remove the – experimental modules flag into LTS version.

3. Startup time improvements-

Node.js 11 reduces startup time of worker threads almost 60% by using built-in code cache support. Node 12 has built upon this idea to generate the code cache for built-in libraries in advance at build time, enabling the primary thread to utilize the code cache to start up the initial load of any built-in library written in JavaScript. The end result is another 30% speedup in startup time for the main thread, and your applications will load for users faster than ever before.

4. Native modules get easier in Node.js-

Stepping back from the low-level improvements, there’s some cool stuff additionally coming for developers and module makers inside the Node ecosystem. Making and building native modules for Node keeps on improving, with changes that include better support for native modules in combination with worker threads, as well as the version 4 release of the N-API, which makes it simpler to configure your very own threads for native  asynchronous functions. Summarized, this implies creators and maintainers of Node-specific modules have almost as simple a time keeping up these modules as pure JavaScript module creators. The increased complexity that came about because of maintainers expecting to rebuild the distributed binaries for each Node.js version they needed their modules to support is now largely abstracted away courtesy of the N-API.

5. Integrated heap dumps-

Another feature in this release around heaps, sure to accelerate the debugging procedure, is integrated heap dumps, which ships with Node.js 12, already built-in. Presently there’s no need to install new modules to examine memory issues- simply tell Node what kind of JSON-formatted diagnostic summary you need by means of the command line or an API call and parse through all of the information you can deal with.

6. Diagnostic reports on demand-

Changing the discussion to debugging, there’s a new experimental feature  in Node.js 12 enabling users to generate a report on demand or when certain trigger events occur. This kind of real-time reporting can help analyze issues in production including crashes, slow performance, memory leaks, high CPU utilization, unexpected errors, and so forth- the kind of stuff that typically takes hours if not days to debug, analyze and fix.

7. Properly configured default heap limits-

Presently, we should discuss some lower level upgrades. So far, the JavaScript heap size defaulted to the maximum heap sizes set by V8 for use with browsers, except if manually configured generally. With the release of Node.js 12, the JS heap size will be configured based on available memory, which ensures Node doesn’t attempt to utilize more memory than is available and terminate processes when its memory is exhausted. Say goodbye to out of memory errors- probably some of the time- when processing a lot of data. The old – max-old-space-size banner will still be available to set a different limit if needed, yet ideally, this feature will reduce the requirement for setting the flag.

Conclusion-

These are some amazing features in Node v 12 which will help the Node.js Development process and a few features like planning to include Python 3 support, improving startup performance, Core Promise API support, further work on standards, and another Streams API will arrive in the new node release.

You have seen these new features of Node.js V12. There might be few also. Node 12 can be the best choice due to these new features. If you are still confused about server-side development with Node.js, Connect with solace experts and develop the best software that will boost your business to the next level.

6 Cool Optimization Techniques In React

An important factor for better user experience is speed i.e how much time a user has to wait to first see contents from your website or application. Negative statistics lead to a decrease in user satisfaction and also eventually customers. One solution for reducing this is to properly optimize your application. In computer science, optimization is the selection of the best element (as to some criterion) from some set of available alternatives. React allows us to build encapsulated components that deal with their own state, then compose them to make complex UIs. These components make up small parts of our UI. This implies a lot of times, we unintentionally create redundant components and also structure our code in ways that can affect the general loading time of our application.

As stated before, the solution is optimization, and for this case, we can describe it as the most ideal way we can write a specific code block, function or component to achieve reusability and reduce the time taken to return data generally in a near instant manner. With the help of some inbuilt APIs like React.Component, React.PureComponent and life-cycle methods React offers, we can optimize our components to ensure quick and also efficient load times in our applications. Commonly, our components are composed of CSS, JS and HTML code. Being able to decide when certain pieces show up will greatly affect your page speed. Here, we will learn different optimization methods that use these inbuilt APIs, lifecycle methods and also some other general techniques that ensure you to improve your React code.

6 Cool Optimization Techniques In React-

1. Use React.Suspense and React.Lazy to load components declaratively-

Normally, you need to load parts of your application just when they are requested. For example, loading shopping cart information just when the cart symbol is clicked, loading images at the bottom of a long image list when the user looks to that point, and so on. Lazy loading is a popular optimization technique widely used to accelerate the load time of applications. React.Lazy helps us load components on demand in this way decreasing the load time of our application as just the required parts will be present as requested. 

With its basic syntax, it can be used effectively without problem. It takes a callback function as a parameter that will load the component’s file using the dynamic import() syntax.

// MyComponent.js
class MyComponent extends Component{
    render() {
        return (<div>MyComponent</div>)
    }
}
const MyComponent = React.lazy(()=>import('./MyComponent.js'))
function App() {
    return (<div><MyComponent /></div>)
}

Behind the scenes, at compile time a separate bundle is made by our webpack when it hits the React.lazy() and import() statement. This process is called Code- Splitting. Our final application will be separated into different bundles containing UI pieces that would be loaded at whenever they are required.

2. Use React Suspense-

In the time the component will be swapped in, a little time lag will occur leaving a screen freeze experience for your user. To give the user update or feedback on the result of the process React.Suspense is used. React.Suspense is used to wrap lazy components to show fallback content while loading the component.

// MyComponent.js
const Mycomponent = React.lazy(()=>import('./component.js'))
function App() {
    return (
    <div>
        <Suspense fallback={<div>loading ..</div>}>
            <MyComponent />
        </Suspense>
    </div>)
}

Presently, whatever the component is being loaded and there’s a delay a fallback text loading.. will be rendered. 

3. Prevent unnecessary re-rendering with shouldComponentUpdate()-

Most times in our application, we end up having instances of one component present on the screen. For example, on a blog page, we may have different blog posts show up via a blog post component that in turn also renders like button components. If not appropriately dealt with, a change in the state of a button component can cause all of the button components to re-render. The solution for this is using shouldComponentUpdate method.

shouldComponentUpdate() is used to let React know if a component’s output isn’t influenced by the current change in state or props. By default, it re-renders on each state change. It always returns a boolean as a response- if the component should re-render or not. The default is that it always returns true. A shouldComponentUpdate method is called with nextProps as the first argument and nextState as the second:

shouldComponentUpdate(nextProps, nextState){
    return nextProps.next !== this.props.next  
}

Now, if the next prop hasn’t changed there’s no reason to change the appearance of the component by re-rendering. This may not seem like immense upgrades, however, in an application with such huge numbers of components re-rendering shouldComponentUpdate will help to improve execution.

4. Use React.PureComponent-

Rather than using shouldComponentUpdate method in our components, React introduced a new component with built-in shouldComponentUpdate implementation, the React.PureComponent component.

React.PureComponent is like React.Component. The difference between them is that React.Component doesn’t implement shouldComponentUpdate(), but React.PureComponent implements it with a shallow prop and state comparison. No additional code is required, you should simply to use it in your class declaration:

// use this
class MyComponent extends React.PureComponent{
    render() {
        return (<div>MyComponent</div>)
    }
}
// instead of
class MyComponent extends React.Component{
    render() {
        return (<div>MyComponent</div>)
    }
}

Now with our pure component we no longer have to write:

shouldComponentUpdate(nextProps, nextState){
    return nextProps.next !== this.props.next  
}

It already implements this by default for us.

In spite of the fact that this is the recommended way to use shouldComponentUpdate only extend PureComponent when you hope to have basic props and state, or use forceUpdate() when you realize deep data structures have changed. Or on the other hand, think about utilizing immutable objects to facilitate quick comparisons of nested data. 

5. Remove unused DOM elements with ComponentDidUnmount()-

When working with React, it is important to consider what happens when an element is removed from the DOM. Do they truly leave? Also does the code simply lie around despite the fact that it isn’t displayed to the user? Having unused code around causes an issue called memory leak. React solves this for us by providing us with the componentWillUnmount method. componentWillUnmount() is used to stop any unused code from running when a component is removed from the DOM.

You can perform a few cleanups with this method, for example, invalidating timers, canceling network requests, or cleaning up any subscriptions that were made in componentDidMount().

Consider the following component:

// App.js
class App extends Component {
    constructor(props) {
        super(props);
        this.state = {};
    }
    componentDidMount() {
        document.addEventListener("click", this.closeMenu);
    }
    openMenu = () => { }
    closeMenu = () => { }
    render() {
        return (
          <a href ="#" onClick = {this.closeMenu}>X</a>
        );
    }
}

In the above code, when you click the X link without the componentDidUnmount() the menu is closed yet the event listener which was created when the components was mounted is as yet available.

To fix that, we can add a componentDidUnmount() to our component:

componentWillUnmount() {
   document.removeEventListener("click", this.closeMenu);
}

Now, when the button is clicked the event listener is removed with the componentDidUnmount() method.

6. Use React.Memo to cache components-

One approach to speed up an application is by implementing memoization. Memoization is an optimization technique used to primarily speed up programs by storing the results of expensive function calls and returning the cached results when similar inputs occur again. A memoized function is faster because if the function is called with the same values from the past one instead of executing function logic, it will rather fetch the result from cache.

In React, it is common for a component to change state multiple times. It is likewise common for certain components to exist without the need to change state. If you have a few components that rarely change state you should consider caching them. React.Memo gives us a simple API to implement memoization. It became available in React V16.6.0. Consider the following component:

// userDetails.js
const UserDetails = ({user}) =>{
    const {name, occupation} = user;
    return (
        <div>
            <h4>{name}</h4>
            <p>{occupation}</p>
        </div>
    )
}

Currently, every time the userDetails function is called it executes the function again and again regardless of whether these details rarely change. We can use React.memo to cache it:

export default React.memo(UserDetails)

As you can see no complex code is required. Simply wrap your component in the React.memo function and React deals with the rest for you.

Apart from this, you can also know the benefits of using React for app development at- Why you should build your app with react native?

Final Words-

Speed is an important factor for web application or website’s performance as it leads to success. These optimization techniques can give you a positive effect to your react development. There can be a few others also. If you still have a question about the performance of development in react, consult with Solace experts. Solace team is here to help you with new trends and technologies that give you the best solution for your business success.