Frontend System Design Essentials: Optimistic updates

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Most UI interactions work — but don’t always feel responsive. Whether you're submitting a comment, tapping "like," or updating a list, even a short delay can make your app feel slow and unpolished.

That’s where optimistic updates come in — a technique that lets you update the UI before the server responds, creating a snappier, more seamless experience for users.

In this video, I walk you through the idea of optimistic updates in frontend development — what they are, when to use them, and how to implement them using React Query with a REST API.

This is another episode in the Frontend System Design Essentials series — each video focuses on one key concept that helps you build responsive, scalable, and maintainable frontend systems.

In this episode, you’ll learn how to:

Understand the UX problem caused by even small delays in feedback
Use optimistic updates to make likes and comments feel instant
Handle errors with rollback and restore the original state
Implement this pattern using React Query’s onMutate, onError, and onSuccess

By the end, you’ll have a solid, practical understanding of optimistic updates — and how to use them to build fast, delightful user interfaces.

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👉 Maintainable React (Udemy Course): https://udemy.com/course/mastering-ma...
👉 React Anti-Patterns (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1805123971
👉 More Tutorials on Advanced Patterns: https://icodeit.com.au/tutorials/adva...

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💬 Let me know in the comments: Have you used optimistic updates before? What’s your favorite place to apply them — likes, checkboxes, or comment forms?

#frontend #systemdesign #reactjs #optimisticupdate #userexperience #icodeit