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Web Development Lesson 1 of 4

React Mental Model & Component Lifecycle

22:15 Modern Frontend Architecture with React & Next.js

Deep dive into unidirectional data flow, immutability, reconciliation, the Virtual DOM, and why pure functions make UI predictable.

Lesson notes

React revolutionized frontend development because it treats your user interface as a pure mathematical function of state: `UI = f(state)`. When state changes, React recalculates the optimal DOM delta.

What you'll learn

  • State as a snapshot in time
  • The rules of React hooks: dependency arrays and closures
  • Component composition over inheritance and prop drilling

1. Immutability & State Snapshots

Never mutate state directly (`state.count = 5`). Always trigger state setters so React can schedule reconciliation and re-render the view.