As developers, we all want to write efficient, maintainable code. We want our applications to be fast, reliable, and easy to understand, with a good developer experience. When we're restricted by the tools we're using, it can be frustrating. It can feel like we're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

The problem is, beginners watch tutorials on youtube and use CRA to start with, but they never really upgrade their skills. They just keep using the outdated tools that they initially learnt.

In this post, I'll discuss why you should probably not use create-react-app anymore, and how you can upgrade from it.

By using another tools, you have much better DX, ship apps faster AND are just happier in life, because of better community support.

But, why should you listen to me?

I ship good, performant products. In fact, I shipped 12+ products last year and made two products already this month. I'm not particularly an expert here - but my choice of tools is optimised for best DX and shipping speed (and quality of product, ofcourse). I started web development about 8 months ago (before which, i worked on discord bots and twitter bots). I've used various tools (react or not), including Create React App, and have spoken to and met a lot of experts in this field.

I've also had the opportunity to work on a lot of different types of projects, ranging from small personal websites to large-scale enterprise applications.

Argument

It's officially deprecated

The React team no longer recommends using CRA for new projects. This doesn't mean that CRA is unsafe or will stop working, but that there's much better things that you can use instead.

In fact, when you run the command, you'll be greeted with this error message

Hmm, not ideal.