The latest React.js insights with Oskar Malinski

Welcome to .js MarketWatch – our new interview series spotlighting developers and engineering leaders across the JavaScript landscape. Each month, we’ll dive into a specific JS framework or trend through the lens of someone working at the heart of it, uncovering what’s shaping the market and where the opportunities lie. This month, we chatted to Oskar Malinski, Development Manager at EBM Software, about React.js and Styled Components.

Give us an overview of your experience and your chosen topic within React.js…

On front end side of development styling is important piece of the puzzle. For styling various elements of our projects we have been using something called Styled Components.

I personally like it because developers have full control over it and they still use CSS while using styled-components. I believe that is important because if developer uses some other styling system they eventually lose that connection with CSS itself.

We have recently been asked to standardise our styling across few projects and we have decided that this is good time to look again into styling libraries and we have chosen one called HeroUI (previously called NextUI). We started using this system recently and so far we have not experiences many issues with it while it obviously speeds up our work.

Why do you think this topic is especially important right now for the developer community?

Styling elements was always very time consuming for developers and there were many attempts (failed) in the past to create some sort of styling library that would be speeding up development, however there always involved drawback of losing part of control over components.

HeroUI managed to overcome most of the issues related to using it and therefore we decided to go with it. There are still components that we have to write ourselves, but we are fairly happy with HeroUI so far.

Is this something clients should be investing in/adopting more readily– and what’s the risk if they ignore it?

It really depends on the business. The reason we used styled-components in the past was 100% control of our elements, which is great to have. With HeroUI I feel that we have 95% control which seems to be good enough.

I believe that companies really need to think which system to go with or if they want to use one at all. Wrong choice might mean that documentation will be lacking or developers at some point might face styling bugs/issues that are not resolvable in short time.

What kind of impact do you think this will have over the next 6–12 months on developers working in React.js, or on businesses hiring talent?

Developers get used to whatever styling way they used before, therefore even when they are looking for a job they would want to continue using what they are familiar with.

Due to that it is very important to pick one of the more popular styling systems. Our research highlighted that for our company choice was between HeroUI and Shadcn UI.

For example, at my company we had one new developer who was strongly in favor of Tailwind when he started working here 2 years ago. At first he was very reluctant to use Styled-Components, but eventually he understood the benefits of it and also the disadvantages of Tailwind version that was available at the time. Long story short now we moved to using HeroUI which is actually based on Tailwind.

Developers need to understand that libraries also change over time, some are maintained better and therefore become more powerful while others might be losing popularity as they are harder to use or have some other issues.

AI – friend or foe? How are you leveraging it in your day-to-day work?

I would say I am AI friend. Users of our software have to create hierarchies of folders and files where they later on upload various files. We are currently working on solution where AI would create those names for the users therefore possibly shortening their setup process.

Are there any tools, libraries, resources, or even people in the community that have really shaped the way you approach this topic?

Around COVID times I worked at company called Leisure Pass Group (GoCity). There was about 5 of us Senior/Lead Developers with many years of experience and we were also coming from different places where we used different tools, libraries etc.

For about 3 months we have been trying to create most flexible yet powerful structure, which would allow many people to work on it at the same time, where everything was easy to find. Those 3 months were likely the most valuable in my career. All of us listened to each other to our explanations why something works for us and why it doesn’t and eventually the structure that we have created was amazing in my view.

Where would you recommend others go if they want to really dive deep into this area like you have?

I would say it depends what is the end goal. For me for many years the end goal was being someone like Software Architect however I transitioned from being one to being more like Director of Development. If someone wants to be amazing on technical side then in my view they should join larger organisation to learn from many other skilled people there.

When someone is starting their career and they join very small company where they are lets say one of the two FrontEnd developers then that route can lead to learning many bad habits. These days people should also have actual proper mentors to get their point of view to normalize their career progression. I was considering being one to few people, but I never have time somehow.

What’s on your learning or experimentation list this year?

We already using D3 Charts in our projects, but we want to get deeper into it and experimenting with it to generate even nicer Financial Charts for our users. For example drill down feature where You click on the piece of pie chart and that it then nicely animating and transitioning into more detailed info about this piece of pie chart.

Consultant insights

“React remains the most in-demand frontend framework in 2025, used by companies of all sizes, from start-ups to global enterprises. Businesses value React because it’s widely supported, has a huge community, and makes it easier to build and update modern web applications.For clients, choosing React often means quicker delivery times, easier hiring, and long-term stability thanks to its large pool of skilled developers. For candidates, React experience continues to open doors, but competition is strong. Standing out now means showing you can work well in a team, understand project goals, and adapt to new tools and trends.”