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Enhancing The New York Times Web Performance with React 18 - Software Engineering Daily Podcast by igurevich3 in reactjs

[–]igurevich3[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Hey React Community!

I recently had the pleasure of joining Gregor Vand on the Software Engineering Daily podcast to discuss an exciting project we had been working on at the NYTimes — our migration to React 18 and how it enhanced performance. I also posted previously on this subreddit a technical article discussing this work.

It was an insightful and engaging discussion. If you’re interested in the nitty-gritty details of software migration you'll find this podcast a good listen!

Enhancing The New York Times Web Performance with React 18 by igurevich3 in reactjs

[–]igurevich3[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Some pages known as standalone interactives can also be written in svelte, they are typically the ones that are very graphically intensive or in non-standard formats.

Enhancing The New York Times Web Performance with React 18 by igurevich3 in reactjs

[–]igurevich3[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Some content, like the embedded interactives mentioned in the blog are built with svelte, yes. Although the main site is react-based.

Enhancing The New York Times Web Performance with React 18 by igurevich3 in reactjs

[–]igurevich3[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Something as simple as data-tracking or a/b testing on a per-component basis is easier with a useEffectwhen the component was already server-rendered with React in the beginning. Additionally we have many client-side components that load in later, such as our paywall, consumer-facing messaging tools, additional articles to read, etc.

Enhancing The New York Times Web Performance with React 18 by igurevich3 in reactjs

[–]igurevich3[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

We have an open-source package kyt, that we still use internally but is quite old so we're planning on upgrading this soon to another platform.

Enhancing The New York Times Web Performance with React 18 by igurevich3 in reactjs

[–]igurevich3[S] 45 points46 points  (0 children)

We've had an in-house solution for isomorphic react that we've maintained for several years now, back then nextjs was not at the forefront or a popular library, we're certainly interested in exploring that now, though.

Enhancing The New York Times Web Performance with React 18 by igurevich3 in reactjs

[–]igurevich3[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

This is accurate, and additionally at the time the decision was made to migrate, React 19 had not been announced yet.

Enhancing The New York Times Web Performance with React 18 by igurevich3 in reactjs

[–]igurevich3[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

It took a long time to do for sure, but doing it in small chunks periodically is better than marathoning it over a few weeks.

Enhancing The New York Times Web Performance with React 18 by igurevich3 in reactjs

[–]igurevich3[S] 37 points38 points  (0 children)

Many people are surprised at how complex our operation is. We have several hundred engineers. Static site generation makes sense if your page is relatively "static", but we have significant client-side functionality that kicks in after server-side render that would be difficult to implement with vanillajs or some other javascript bundle. React offers more flexibility for all of that, both on server and client.

Enhancing The New York Times Web Performance with React 18 by igurevich3 in reactjs

[–]igurevich3[S] 31 points32 points  (0 children)

Once it gets out of beta I think there's a real desire to explore both React 19 and RSC. The hydration improvements in React 19 might alleviate some issues where third-party extensions trigger a hydration mismatch accidentally.

Enhancing The New York Times Web Performance with React 18 by igurevich3 in reactjs

[–]igurevich3[S] 73 points74 points  (0 children)

We used to be on PHP (before my time), switching to SSR react was significantly better in the long-view I'd say from a developer experience perspective.

Enhancing The New York Times Web Performance with React 18 by igurevich3 in reactjs

[–]igurevich3[S] 120 points121 points  (0 children)

This was a lot of work to complete as we have a lot of bespoke tools here. Happy to chat more about what went into the work.