How a struggling React project and an old Delphi habit led me to build a framework

Description and use

Implementing UECA‑React turned a chaotic React codebase into a maintainable, fast, and reusable component system, saving the project and team jobs.

Problem

A small team was rewriting a legacy web app with .NET Core, React, Blueprint.js and MobX, but the code became a tangled mess of low‑level React with props drilled everywhere and inconsistent layout patterns, threatening project shutdown and job loss.

Outcome

Adopting UECA‑React transformed a chaotic React codebase into a maintainable, fast, and reusable component system, preventing project cancellation and preserving team jobs.

Workflow

• Learned JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, CSS
• Designed a component pattern with properties, events, state, methods, children, and a view
• Implemented a message bus for decoupled communication
• Created UECA‑React library
• Showed prototype to team
• Team rewrote screens using the new pattern
• Project stabilized

Evidence

After a couple of screens, the speed difference was obvious. Within a few months the team was rewriting those tangled screens on their own. The project was saved, and so were the jobs. Everyone still works there.

Source

I spent a few months learning JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML and CSS properly. Then it clicked: with TypeScript's literal types you can generate things like onChange events for every property automatically.

Source