Unstyled Components: A Must for Modern Web Applications
Jonathan Felipe de Oliveira | Dec 23, 2025
Building with React can feel straightforward at first — but truly effective engineering comes from the decisions behind the code. Best practices, thoughtful structure, and performance-oriented thinking are what separate functional apps from scalable, maintainable ones.
This article walks through the principles and patterns that help elevate React projects with cleaner layers, clearer responsibilities, and predictable performance.
1. Beyond the basics: the start of the journey
Most developers begin by learning the essentials: creating components, managing state, and rendering UI. What many courses don’t cover is how architecture, performance, and engineering disciplines shape long-term quality.
The real distinction between junior and senior engineers isn’t speed — it’s clarity, structure, and intention.
Push past the basics. Review your own code with a critical eye: Is it simple to test? Easy to maintain? Observe how experienced engineers organize projects and notice the patterns they rely on — and why.
Key Takeaway: Stay curious. Look beyond surface-level React and learn to recognize the difference between code that merely works and code that endures.
2. Separation of concerns: the power of layers
Separation of Concerns (SoC) is one of software engineering’s foundational principles. In React, it’s essential for modularity, testing, and scalability.
Every React application can be viewed through four core layers:
- Presentation Layer (JSX/HTML/CSS): Everything related to UI output.
- Business Logic Layer: The rules and decision-making behind each feature.
- Application Logic Layer: The flow of data and state, often managed through custom hooks.
- External World Layer (APIs, SDKs): Integrations and external dependencies, kept isolated from UI concerns.
Applying SoC means keeping each concern focused. Extract business rules into standalone functions, group API calls, and manage orchestration inside custom hooks. When each layer stays independent, your system becomes more predictable, testable, and interchangeable.
Key Takeaway: Great React apps have structure. Keep UI, logic, and integrations separated to make the codebase easier to scale, test, and refactor.
3. The composition pattern: flexibility through structure
“Props hell”, overloaded components packed with endless configuration props, is a classic React pain point.
The Composition Pattern offers a cleaner approach. Instead of stacking props and conditionals, build components using smaller, focused subcomponents.
Imagine a Post component that supports multiple image layouts. Instead of a complex layout prop with branching logic, you can compose the UI using children or subcomponents. The result: more flexibility, less complexity.
Key Takeaway: Choose composition over heavy configuration. Smaller pieces composed together create cleaner, more adaptable components.
4. Less is more: avoid overusing libraries
It’s easy to install packages for every small feature — but each dependency adds weight, risk, and long-term maintenance overhead.
Before adding a library, ask:
Can React or plain JavaScript handle this? Lean stacks improve performance and make onboarding smoother for future contributors.
Key Takeaway: Every dependency has a cost. Prefer React native solutions when possible and keep your toolkit streamlined.
5. The Achilles’ Heel of Performance: useState and useEffect
useState and useEffect are common sources of performance issues when overused or misused. Every state update triggers a re-render, and a poorly organized state can cause unnecessary renders across your component tree.
Reduce the state to the essentials. Keep effects simple and avoid embedding complex flows inside them. If an effect starts resembling a full decision tree, the logic likely belongs elsewhere.
Key Takeaway: Use the state with intention. Keep effects minimal and focus updates where they matter most.
6. DRY: Don’t Repeat Yourself
Duplication is one of the quickest ways to erode maintainability.
React was designed for reuse, yet repeated JSX or logic is still common. Whenever you spot duplication, extract reusable components or utilities. Addressing repetition early keeps the system more stable as it expands.
Key Takeaway: If you’ve written something twice, extract it once. Reuse builds consistency and reduces bugs.
7. The Danger of Premature Memoization
It’s tempting to reach for React.memo, useMemo, or useCallback at the first sign of slow rendering. But memoization comes with overhead — using it too early can actually hurt performance and increase complexity.
Solve fundamentals first: simplify state, reduce unnecessary prop changes, and isolate frequently updated sections. Enable memoization only after profiling confirms you’ll see a measurable benefit.
Key Takeaway: Don’t optimize blindly. Measure first, then memoize. Strong architecture delivers the biggest performance gains.
8. Decentralize state: avoid excessive “state lifting”
Lifting all state to parent components may seem organized, but it often causes over-rendering and bloated component trees.
The state should live as close as possible to where it’s used. Localizing state improves clarity, reduces re-renders, and keeps parent components lightweight.
Key Takeaway: The state belongs to the component that owns it. Keep it local for better clarity and smoother performance.
9. The power of theory and automation
Understanding why patterns exist is just as important as knowing how to use them.
A solid grasp of React fundamentals helps you get more value from automation tools — including AI — when refactoring, optimizing, or enforcing consistency across a codebase.
Theory gives direction. Automation accelerates execution. Together, they enhance engineering quality.
Key Takeaway: Automation strengthens deep understanding, not replaces it. Learn the principles first, then scale them with the right tools.
Conclusion: the future of the React developer
The difference between good and great React developers is mastery of fundamentals, consistent use of best practices, and smart application of automation.
With focus and discipline, your React code can evolve from functional to thoughtfully engineered.
Final Takeaways
- Separate concerns into clear layers.
- Favor composition over prop-heavy components.
- Limit unnecessary dependencies.
- Manage state and effects with care.
- Remove repetition early.
- Use memoization strategically.
- Keep state local to reduce noise and improve performance.
- Combine theory with automation to strengthen your craft.
Apply these principles consistently, and your React work will grow stronger, cleaner, and ready to scale.
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