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React Nexus 2025 in 25 Points

· 3 min read
D Balaji
D Balaji
Lead Design Technologist

React Nexus 2025: React Harder​

Second time at React Nexus. Bigger venue, bigger sponsors, same old dev jokes. Held at Tata Auditorium, IISC – beautiful place if you like trees and long walks to the nearest metro.

What Went Down (Other Than My Battery)​

  • Logistics: One sticker. One tee. One meal per day. That’s the deal. Cab-friendly, metro-unfriendly.

  • Sponsors: Took the stage like Bollywood villains. Some reruns from 2024. Gemini & Copilot aced the quizzes more than the attendees did.

  • ImageKit.io: Indie builder CEO handing out stickers = 🫶 Who knew images + GenAI + AWS could be a profitable cocktail?

  • GoDaddy: Still selling domains like flash sales. Bought one. Page still says “Hello World.” Now with GenAI, they add the hello page for you. Still pushing Outlook 365 like it’s going out of stock.

  • Vonage: Zoom-ish APIs. Most colorful booth. Least understood by crowd. They were hiring.

  • WSO2 Asgardeo: Auth-as-a-service. Repeat speaker, repeat stickers. Still no buy-in from bosses.

  • Zoho Catalyst: “Run everything with us (on free tier).” Indie energy, real. Good for side projects, enterprise signup after sales men raids. Might convert prompt to SaaS if you squint hard enough.

  • Code of Conduct Slide: The usual “don’t harass women” clause. But honestly, dev conferences now look like HR onboarding. 50/50 gender ratio. Welcome change.

  • React 19 + NextJS: Headliners. React Actions API opened the show. Time to un-dust the docs.

  • Audience Engagement: Peak Bangalore moment: guy hacked, built, and launched a product on New Year’s Eve. 🙌

  • React Compiler: Still a mystery box. Used in 3D video gen demo—hit and miss.

  • Best Speaker? Wadad Parker. Tackled React Context with stand-up energy. Put Toastmasters to shame.

  • GoDaddy Talk on Microfrontends: Enlightening. But no tools, just “vibes.”

  • Tech Company vs Software Company vs Vibe-Coded Startup:

    • Tech company = builds tech
    • Software company = builds from packages
    • Vibe-coded = builds vibes, nothing else

  • Zoho Catalyst (again): Their domain setup is easier than your weekend plans.

  • Lighthouse Talk (again): Same speaker. Same slides. Different year. Look at web.dev if you need filler content, apparently.

  • Monitoring & Observability: Not the same. One alerts, one explains. Both are friends now.

  • Frontend QA: Smoke tests > Nothing. Playwright > Hope. Monitoring > Late-night debugging.

  • Telemetry 101: Metrics, logs, traces... add them to your design system if you want to sound senior.

  • AI Tools: Cursor’s @web, @docs, @diff = DevGPT mode unlocked.

  • MCP (Magic Component Platform): Figma → Code without tears. Everyone's happy. Until you self-host it online and leak your keys.

  • React Dev Joke Moment: “Lazy loading is like buying 10 chips, eating one at a time.” Me: “Bro that’s throttling. Lazy loading = frequent runs to the shop.”

  • React Native: Few talks. Fewer fans. Still exists.

  • Browser-LLMs: Local LLMs in your browser soon. Because why not.

Conclusion: React is evolving, audiences are engaging, and conferences are quietly becoming better. React Nexus 2025 felt more like a community summit than a sponsor expo—despite the sponsor overload. Chennai devs showed up in droves. Peaceful vibes. Good chai. No one shipped to production from the venue, which is a win.

P.S. I still haven’t deployed that domain I bought.