Published: Mar 28, 2022 by

Last year I started working on a new React app. I was late to the React game, having only started using it with React 16 I had experience with some existing React projects, but this was an opportunity to start something new. Additionally I was starting out small with one focused use case, but if that was successful [it was!] the app would grow to encompass quite a few screens and tools.

In the process of determining how state would be managed I wanted to test out using useContext and useReducer to see how far I could get before reaching for a state store. For the initial use case this worked great, and to this day I still make use of context for a few key parts of the app. Eventually though as the app grew, and as I wrote more custom reducers I decided it was time to explore my state store options. Along the way I looked at the latest versions of mobx-state-tree , redux (specifically RTK) , relay and others.

Ultimately I ended up choosing Redux Toolkit (for a variety of reasons), because it’s opinionated and easy to observe. The languages we use to solve problems today are not precise and encompasing enough to build systems that cover the universe of execution paths. Because of this it’s important that the tools you use help you understand the system when it behaves in an unexpected manner.

This is pretty trivial in Redux when using Redux Dev Tools. Add in using RTK Query and suddenly you might feel like you have super powers for understanding the state patterns in your app. With the time travel and state sharing capabilities built right into Redux Dev Tools you can snapshot a session, share it and walk back through each dispatched action in a way that almost feels like magic compared to other debugging experiences I’ve had over the years [writing to the console, re constructing state manually, browser debugger step by step].

And that’s one of the primary reasons I ended up using Redux in 2022. There are plenty of valid reasons to use other tools, but after all these years I accept that bugs and edge cases are going to happen. Knowing that I want tools that help me explain and understand them so I can move on to the next step of determining a fix and shipping it.