I recently got into NodeJS and setup a few simple sites/blogs with passportJS and all the other "standard" stuff to get a good grasp of it. While checking tutorials and other stuff, I noticed that the MERN stack seems to be the natural next step (other than MEAN which I'd rather not get into for now). Seeing that I can do authentication, get content from mongo etc using node, what exactly are the benefits of combining it with react? I am not really asking about performance etc but more about actual possibilities of creating something. Like what can I do with node+react that I can't do with just node. This is my first question on here so I apologise if anything isn't clear, I am still trying to wrap my head around all the ways of doing things ;)
Use React if you need complex state management combined with lightning fast DOM manipulation.
Ask yourself: Can I do this with vanilla JS or jQuery? Or am I looking to create a SPA-like experience?
MongoDb, Express, and Node.js are also known as the MEN Stack. I've found it to be more interesting and workable than I originally thought, however, as soon as discussions move to a JS framework - I will never recommend one.
Don't feel obligated to use a framework for anything you don't need it for. Frameworks are unnecessary 'dictators' that breed lazy developers and prevents them from fully understanding the code it's based on.
Also, look into Vue.js. Anyone I know who has left either AngularJS, Angular or React, quickly adopt Vue.js and seem to recommend it since it's "friendlier".
I think that React is mainly for optimizing performance, so if you don't really care about that you don't have to use it. However, it does have a lot of nice simple methods to attach database changes to UI changes using state, which I think is one of its greatest advantages. Hope this helps!
Siddarthan Sarumathi Pandian
Full Stack Dev at Agentdesks | Ex Hashnode | Ex Shippable | Ex Altair Engineering
You can technically use Mongo and Node on the backend and choose to use whatever you want on the front-end. You don't need to limit yourself to MEAN or MERN, they're just a bunch of things which work together or perhaps, often used together.
Like what can I do with node+react that I can't do with just node- Let me address this now. NodeJS is a run time to write server side JS code, while React is a library to build your UI.