npm Howto: Optimizing Your App's Performance with Routing and Data Fetching

When it comes to setting up an app, it's relatively straightforward to get started. However, as your application grows in complexity, subtleties become increasingly important for maintaining performance. This is where bundlers, routers, and data fetching libraries come into play.

Many popular frameworks, such as Svelte with SvelteKit or Vue with Nuxt, have been designed to help developers overcome these challenges by integrating their bundler with their router and data fetching library. By leveraging these tools, you can optimize your app's performance and ensure it remains fast and responsive even under heavy usage.

One key aspect of optimizing performance is generating HTML from components to display content early on, either during the build process or on the server-side. This approach helps alleviate issues with poor network conditions and low-end devices that may struggle with large amounts of data being loaded over the airwaves.

As your app's data fetching needs become more complex, you may encounter server-client network waterfalls that can lead to slow performance. To combat this, it's essential to consider strategies for splitting code into smaller chunks, such as using a framework like React to handle routing and data fetching for each route individually.

If you're building a new app or site from the ground up with React, we strongly recommend using a framework like Create React App or Next.js. These frameworks provide a wealth of features, including routing and data fetching capabilities, out of the box. Even if you don't initially need these features, it's likely that your project will grow to require them in the future.

In summary, while it is possible to use React without a framework, we believe that using a framework like Create React App or Next.js can help streamline development and ensure optimal performance for your app.

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