React JS and Development Environment Basics

Vocabulary flashcards covering core concepts of React JS, React 18 updates, Web Applications, Node.js, NPM, and Git version control based on the lecture notes.

React

A JavaScript library created by Facebook for building user interfaces (UI) and a tool for building UI components.

View Layer

The role React generally plays in an application, handling the job of rendering data into page HTML through components.

React Component API

One of React's two major APIs, representing the parts of the page that are rendered by the React DOM.

React DOM

The API used to perform the actual rendering of React components on a web page.

JSX

JavaScript XML; an XML-style syntax used by React components to declaratively describe what HTML elements the UI should render.

Declarative Programming

An approach suited for UI development where developers describe what the UI should look like without executing manual micro-operations piece by piece.

Document Object Model (DOM)

The browser representation of rendered HTML that provides the API JavaScript uses to alter page content.

Virtual DOM

A virtual representation of the DOM utilized by React to optimize DOM updates and improve overall UI performance.

Automatic Batching

A feature introduced in React 18 that groups state updates together to reduce the total number of re-renders and enhance performance.

State Transitions

A concept introduced in React 18 that assigns lower priority to less critical state updates compared to urgent state updates that must execute immediately.

Web Application

A program running on a server and rendered by a client browser using the internet, typically divided into a client, server, and database.

Node.js

A runtime environment that provides a way to run JavaScript directly on web servers.

Node Package Manager (NPM)

The standard package manager for Node.js used to manage the ecosystem of node modules and packages.

package.json

A manifest file containing project metadata that documents package dependencies, defines semantic versioning rules, and makes project builds reproducible.

devDependencies

Packages recorded in package.json using the --save-dev flag that are required specifically for project development.

optionalDependencies

Dependencies installed using --save-optional whose build failures will not cause the overall installation process to fail.

Version Control

Software tools that enable management of source code changes and maintain historical version records over time.

Git

A distributed version control system developed by Linus Torvalds originally for managing Linux kernel development.