As one of the curators on React Status (a weekly email rounding up the latest React news, tutorials, and tools), at the end of each year I like to reflect back on the most popular links from the past twelve months.

So, without further ado, here's a look at ten of the most popular React links in 2020 —as determined by readers of React Status.

⚛️ The top ten React highlights of 2020:

The Key React Libraries to Use in 2020

Everyone loves a curated list! This one came right at the start of 2020 and intelligently bought together a variety of key React libraries that still remain valuable. Here's hoping Robin or someone else does a similar list for 2021.

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Five Common Mistakes Writing Components (with Hooks)

Posts where we get to learn from other people’s mistakes are always popular, and so it went with this one from Lorenz Weiß about creating components.

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The Ugly Side of React Hooks

We've covered hooks almost non-stop in React Status since their appearance two years ago, and mostly in a positive light. So we were intrigued to find an article trying to form another side of the argument. From the comments, though, clearly not everybody agreed with the author’s assertions. Dillon Shook's A Critique of React Hooks covered similar ground.

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React Folder Structure in 5 Steps

A walkthrough of how to structure large React apps into folders and files so you can manage them for the long term. There’s no single right way to do it, but Robin, who seemed to have a strong 2020 in terms of his blogging, shared his approach here.

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Stop Mocking fetch

Another developer who had a very strong year of blogging about React was Kent C Dodds! Here he covered not only why you shouldn’t mock fetch or your API clients in your tests but what to consider instead.

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A Guide to Six Commonly Used React Component Libraries

There are literally hundreds of repos on GitHub all of which are intended to contribute something to the React ecosystem. The flipside of that excellent state of affairs, for the beginner, is precisely where to start your own React journey. The author offers an informed, experienced opinion of the landscape in the component library space.

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Why React Hooks over HOCs

Another from Robin, this time with a fantastic set of examples demonstrating the advantages of using hooks over higher-order components.

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15 React Best Practices You Need to Follow in 2020

Sure, we're about to head into 2021, but this recently updated summary of React best practices remains worthwhile. The site is focused on WordPress, but everybody should find something useful in here.

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10 React security best practices

Ron Perris shares a compact distillation of seemingly everything you need to know about making your React app more capable of withstanding exploits. This includes a methodology for automating testing to help ensure you’ve done it right.

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Why I’m Using Next.js in 2020

In this ten-minute video Lee makes the bold claim that he thinks “the future of React is actually Next.js”, but attempts to break it down and explains where he sees React’s role growing server-side.

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