The Great (React) Divide

Today’s issue: The king of pop state, the return of Devin, and saying goodbye to styled-components.

Welcome to #382.

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The Great React Divide

If you’ve been feeling fulfilled over the last few years, you probably missed that React recently hit puberty, started rage listening to Insane Clown Posse, and has seemingly changed its whole identity.

And despite some trepidation from prominent community members, React swears it’s not just a phase.

So how did we get here and why are some in the React ecosystem so upset?

Let’s start with some code.

import { getAnalyticsCSV } from "./api"
import Papa from "papaparse"

export default async function Dashboard() {
  const analytics = await getAnalyticsCSV()
  const results = Papa.parse(analytics, { header: true })
  const rows = results.data

  return (
    <table>
      ...
    </table>
  )
}

This is a perfectly valid React Server Component. It doesn’t need to follow the traditional rules of React (like not fetching data during render) because it doesn’t have the same constraints as a typical React component.

Server Components also come with some performance benefits around shrinking bundle sizes and optimizing time to first paint and interaction.

So why’s everyone so upset? Cause they contain more magic than the night in Las Vegas when Criss Angel hypnotized me and put a devil in my body.

To make RSCs work, you need three things – a (smart) bundler, a server that can take the bundle and stream it to the client, and a router that can request and process the stream from the server.

As Netlify CEO pointed out, they introduce a lot of complexity and tie together the front-end, bundling, and server runtimes for apps that “look and feel no different than the ones built without them”.

Bottom Line: Are we all just addicted to complexity or are RSCs pioneering a new wave of granular, network agnostic UI? I still don’t really know, but the king of pop states has some thoughts.

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KendoReact just released 50 enterprise-grade React components for free

Companies like Samsung, Visa, and Microsoft pay good money to use enterprise React components from Telerik and Kendo UI – and now you can get 50 of their React components for free on npm. No signup required, no license key, no strings attached.

That includes their fast and powerful React Data Grid, DatePicker, dropdowns, and more. And they’re all designed to save you time and help you ship polished apps faster.

Here’s what you get:

• 50+ battle-tested React components, written in TypeScript with a consistent API and small bundle sizes.

• 4 professionally designed themes, 4 Figma UI kits, and thorough documentation to keep you moving.

• Easy integrations with frameworks like Next.js and simple customizations, so everything fits your app perfectly.

Install KendoReact Free from npm – and start building enterprise apps the easy way.

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1. styled-components is going into maintenance mode. If that news makes you feel a little sad and nostalgic, might I remind you that you’re probably overdue for a prostate exam.

2. GitMCP lets you instantly create a remote MCP server for any GitHub project by simply changing the domain from github.com to gitmcp.io. Look who just became a 10x AI developer.

3. CodeRabbit built an AI-powered code review companion that deeply understands your JavaScript codebase and goes way beyond basic linting. It visualizes code changes through interactive file walkthroughs, sequence diagrams that explain component relationships – and it’s free for open source. [sponsored]

4. RedwoodJS is launching RedwoodSDK, a new framework that wants to become the foundation for “the personal software revolution” – which is like the Sexual Revolution of the ’60s for people who spend way too much time on Discord.

5. Cloudflare Developer Week 2025 just kicked off and I wonder if they’ll mention AI stuff at all.

6. Speaking of which, Cognition Labs just released Devin 2.0, and it promises to take your job twice as hard as last time provide a cool new agent-native IDE experience.

7. CarbonQA provides QA services for dev teams, so you’ll never have to QA test your own app ever again. They work in your tools, talk with your team on Slack, and let your engineers spend more of their time engineering. [sponsored]

8. The bolt.new crew have lost their minds and are 1. putting on the world’s biggest hackathon and 2. hosting a “kickoff party” with The Chainsmokers. Assuming you can get over your social anxiety, join the waitlist to (potentially) get an invite.

9. Laravel just released its first beta of Laravel Wayfinder, a new first-party package that bridges your routes between frontend and backend “with zero friction.”

10. upfetch is an advanced fetch client builder for TypeScript, which is almost as cool as their other project, updog.