My hot takes on a new React release

Today’s issue: Why the React haters hate, wellness tips for newsletter writers, and what the mid-’90s era of indie funk can teach us about web development.

Welcome to #429.

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My hot takes on a new React release

React 19.2 was released to the unwashed masses on Wednesday, and it feels like the community’s reaction has been pretty muted so far.

That might be because everyone’s brains turned into oatmeal from consuming too much Sora slop – or maybe it’s just that this was a pretty chill release overall. Instead of a bunch of splashy new APIs, React 19.2 stitches together a set of primitives that lay the groundwork for faster navigation and better DX.

The star here is the new <Activity /> component, which is basically tabbed browsing for your component tree. Instead of conditionally mounting/unmounting UI, you can mark sections as hidden and React will:

• Hide them from view
• Unmount their effects
• Defer updates until nothing else is happening

But crucially, it keeps the component tree alive in memory while this is happening. That means React can pre-render the screens a user is likely to navigate to next, or restore the state of a screen they just left — with no lost form inputs, no re-fetching, and much snappier transitions.

Here are a few more highlights:

• useEffectEvent — Cleanly handle “event-like” code inside Effects without breaking your dependency arrays or silencing ESLint (yes, the name is confusing).

• cacheSignal (RSC-only) — Lets you abort or clean up work when cached results won’t be used anymore.

• Performance Tracks in DevTools — New Chrome profiler views showing priorities, scheduling, and component timings.

• Partial Pre-rendering — Pre-render static shells to a CDN, then resume rendering with dynamic content later.

Bottom Line: This is the least amount of hype we’ve seen around a React release for a while, but considering this is its third one in the past 10 months, that’s probably a healthy thing (unlike your aunt’s addiction to AI videos of Bobby Flay making backyard BBQ as an anime cat).

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Auth0 for AI Agents just launched their developer preview 👀

So now you can use their smooth SDK to ship AI agents with built-in auth and security that just works.

Here are a few of the hairy problems it handles for you:

• Real user login – Agents can securely identify who they’re talking to, remember past history, and access the right data without shortcuts.

• Token Vault – Store and refresh API tokens safely, so agents don’t end up with over-broad access or creds in logs (this technical demo shows how it works).

• Human-in-the-loop – Add async approvals for sensitive AI agent actions, with audit trails baked in.

Try out Auth0 for AI Agents free now – and ship new agents faster, safer, and without ever duct-taping OAuth again 🙏.

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1. Dan Abramov wrote an article called Where It’s at:// – and how he’s still got two turntables and a microphone.

2. G2i connects your team with pre-vetted senior developers (contract and full-time). They’ve helped teams at Meta, Microsoft, and more hire faster and with full transparency – so you don’t have to waste time digging through more AI-slop resumes 🙏. [sponsored]

3. Chad Nauseam wrote about how everything people hate about React, is really just stuff they hate about JavaScript – or stuff they hate about themselves, I’d argue.

4. A new React Aria update just dropped with Multi Select, enhanced animation support across components, a new SelectionIndicator component, and more.

5. zustand-sync is a barebones middleware to sync zustand stores across multiple clients.

6. Datadog created this frontend monitoring best practices guide that shows you how to monitor three key aspects of your single-page apps to optimize your performance and UX. [sponsored]

7. Mateusz Krzeszowiak wrote about speculation rules on Shopify – and unfortunately, it didn’t include any helpful tips on how to resell the hundreds of Labubus I impulse bought invested in a couple months back.

8. pompelmi is a Node.js file-upload security toolkit (CLI + middleware) that scans files before ingestion using YARA rules, MIME/content sniffing, and ZIP-bomb detection.

9. Sergio Xalambrí wrote about how to leverage React Router’s built-in data deduplication.

10. Christian Ekrem wrote an article called The Discipline of Constraints about what Elm taught him about React’s useReducer. It’s similar logic to why I constrain myself to only writing this newsletter in a hot sauna between the hours of 2-4 am with nothing in my system but Thai Green Curry flavored Pringles. Healthy body, healthy mind ☯️.