My Relationship With React [So Far]
This blog post is about my relationship with React, why I chose it and why I enjoy it.
I began learning Javascript [I am not sure of the exact date] before October 2016 by developing small “games”. And by adding tiny interactions to websites. So I couldn’t do much at with it…
Fast forward to August/June where I felt I had to learn React, at this point I was somewhat better with Javascript but not all that much/ I had seen the hype of React, and Angular etcetera and thought, I just have to learn this.
So, thats what I tried to do, I tried learning React, I remember following some tutorials, especially the React Documentation’s TicTacToe tutorial, and recall attempting to make my own “build system” which would translate ES6 into ES5 etcetera using Babel & Webpack but ultimately failed.
I played around with React, Angular and Vue but continiously thought to myself… I have little to know clue how to use this in a project without a tutorial. At which point, I stopped learning React.
Again, fast forward some months or perhaps even just one. When I said to myself, lets nevermind about React etcetera and focus on vanilla Javascript. And that is what I done. Thanks to Traversy Media tutorials among others, I was able to become much much better at Javascript.
After feeling confident in my Javascript, I eventually thought: “I’m ready for a JS framework [or library”]. I examined many libraries/frameworks in search for whatever tool was the “closest” to vanilla Javascript which wasn’t too big. It was a tossup between Aurellia, RiotJS, Vue and React.
Personally, I wanted to pick Aurellia but for some reason I didn’t, so I tried RiotJS - I love the concept of it but experienced what I suspect was a bug in RiotJS as my code looked error free. Ao, here we are: “Vue or React”.
Around the time I chose React people had been telling me React was the closest to vanilla JS [at the time I disagreed and I still do to an extent]. I thought to myself, “React is harder than Vue - so if I learn React, Vue will be a walk in the park”; and so I chose React.
I mainly followed Traversy Media’s “Learning React.js” playlist to familliarize myself quickly with React without having to go through an extensive set-up.
I then made a similar application [which is on my Github] using Create-React-App and thus ES6 and based it of the playlist I just mentioned as well as Traversy Media’s React Crash Course. And I loved building my application. But, most importantly, I now understand at least the fundamentals of React - though I am yet [but keen] to use React-Router, Flux/Redux/etc, and I’m excited to use something such as React-Animations.
To conclude. I now feel much more confident using React and feel I have enough knowledge of how it works to competently learn the libray & ecosystem’s tools deeper. So, if you’re struggling to learn React or similar; chances are: you’re not comofrtable enough on vanilla Javascript [I referencing on including the topics which I helped me grasp it easier] and concentrate on React alone until you’re ready to integrating other tools with it.