Building Production-Ready React Dashboards: Lessons Learned

Building Production-Ready React Dashboards: Lessons Learned After 3 months building React dashboard templates, here's what actually worked (and what didn't). The Problem Building admin dashboards from scratch takes 2-3 weeks every time. I was rebuilding the same components: charts, metrics cards, tables, dark mode. Solution: Build reusable, production-ready templates once. Tech Stack TypeScript > JavaScript Started with JS, switched to TS after prop-type chaos. typescript // Before: JavaScript chaos function MetricCard({ data }) { return <div>{data.value}</div> } // After: TypeScript clarity interface MetricCardProps { data: { value: number; label: string; change: number } } function MetricCard({ data }: MetricCardProps) { return <div>{data.value}</div> } Lesson: TypeScript from day 1 saves debugging time later. Tailwind CSS > Everything Else Tried CSS Modules, Styled Components, Emotion. Tailwind won. Why: Fast iteration Small bundle (with purging) Built-in dark mode Consistent tokens