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Akshay Sen

Akshay Sen

Full Stack Javascript Developer

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React: useEffect mistakes, beginner friendly

8 min readOct 17, 2025

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Photo by Lautaro Andreani on Unsplash

Every React developer, myself included, has a complex relationship with the useEffect hook. We call it “useEffect.” It’s our incredibly helpful friend — it handles all the messy, “side effect” tasks: talking to APIs, setting up timers, and adjusting the browser title.

If you don’t give it crystal-clear instructions, it’ll panic, cause chaos, and maybe even crash your app.

You can either setup a small react app or use this to get your hands dirty.

Reat this article for free — https://medium.com/@akshaysen/react-useeffect-mistakes-beginner-friendly-c791ca408d74?sk=200a1a861d5f793af5e8b4cca15f9072

Chapter 1: The Instruction Manual — The Dependency Array

The useEffect hook follows one golden rule: “I only do the work you ask for when the things on my instruction manual change.” That “instruction manual” is the dependency array.

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Mistake 1. Forgetting the Dependency Array

When you write a function for useEffect and forget its dependency array, it assumes it has to run after every single…

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Akshay Sen
Akshay Sen

Written by Akshay Sen

Full Stack Javascript Developer