In this video, I compare two hooks every React developer ends up choosing between: useState and useReducer. Yes, both manage state and both re-render your component, but they shine in different situations. I walk you through a few practical angles to make the decision easier—how much code you write, readability, debugging, and testing. If you want to get up and running quickly with simple, independent values, useState is almost always the easier choice. But as components grow, setter calls can get scattered across JSX and event handlers, and then it becomes harder to follow why an update happens and which pieces of state depend on each other. That’s where useReducer starts to feel cleaner: the component describes what happened (dispatch an action), and the reducer handles how state changes. I also show why useReducer can be a big win for debugging and testing. All updates flow through a single reducer “funnel,” so logging actions and state transitions is straightforward. And because a reducer is just a plain JavaScript function, you can test state logic without rendering a component. My practical advice: start with useState, and switch to useReducer when the logic grows—start simple and add complexity only when you need it.