In the spirit of Halloween, we’re diving into the dark side of React with a spooky look at Refs—an often overlooked but incredibly powerful tool. In this talk, we’ll explore how Refs can be used to bend and even break React’s "rules." Join us for a chilling journey through various use cases of Refs and uncover the mysterious useImperativeHandle—React’s least known (and perhaps most haunted) hook. Get ready to defy React’s conventions in this eerie exploration!

In this talk, I'll uncover some tricks and hacks in React that I learned while maintaining a micro-library (2KB Router). We'll discuss performance and size optimizations, as well as the importance of keeping object references stable when passing them down as props to React components.

I'd like to cover the non-standard use of the useState hook, cloneElement API for component composition, the useSyncExternalStore hook introduced in React 18, and its caveats; as well as lesser-known non-standard hooks such as useEvent and more. To demonstrate these tricks, we'll built a fake multiplayer client component.

React 19 came out with a lot of new APIs but I still see devs falling back to plain'ol useState and useEffect for everything. Lets explore alternatives.

React 18 introduces the React Compiler, a powerful tool for optimizing component rendering and enhancing performance. In this talk, we'll explore how the compiler works, demonstrate practical performance improvements, and show you how to integrate these optimizations into your projects. Whether you're working on new or existing applications, you'll leave with actionable insights to harness the full potential of React 18.