Day 5 of My 90 Days to Job Ready Journey — State Management & Lifecycle in React Native — Arpan Mukherjee

Today was an important step in my React Native learning journey with Expo. I focused on two core concepts that are the backbone of every interactive mobile app: State Management and Component Lifecycle.

🔹 Understanding State Management

State in React Native is what makes apps dynamic and responsive. Without it, every app would just be a collection of static screens.

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Here’s what I practiced today:

• Using useState to store and update data inside a component.
• Making UI elements react instantly when the state changes.
• Building small interactive examples where button clicks updated text and styles in real time.

It clicked for me that state is like the brain of an app, always keeping track of what’s happening and updating the UI accordingly.

🔹 Learning Component Lifecycle

Along with state, I also explored how components mount, update, and unmount.

• Mounting → When a component first appears on the screen.
• Updating → When state or props change, and the UI re-renders.
• Unmounting → When the component is removed from the screen.

I also got introduced to hooks like useEffect, which help run code at specific points in a component’s lifecycle (like fetching data when the screen loads).

Understanding this flow gave me a much clearer picture of how apps work behind the scenes.

✨ Takeaway

Learning state and lifecycle made me realize that these are the foundations of interactivity. They’re not flashy features on their own, but everything I build in the future will rely on them.