Exploring React JS. Where to Start?

Hearing React almost everywhere, I can't help but to explore it too! Although I don't need React as a backend engineer, I feel it could be a great way to get exposure to the front-end world and help me understand the big picture (it did!). I get to learn the perspectives/challenges of front-end development, and keep them in mind when designing back-end systems. More importantly, its just satisfying to learn how things work end-to-end.

But where to start?

If you have basic knowledge of JavaScript, here are (free!) resources that I would recommend:

1. Learn React by Scrimba (https://v2.scrimba.com/learn-react-c0e)
A really great resource to start writing React.

Learning a new technology is not easy. Given the amount of abstractions we see these days, sometimes it can get frustrating to ignore stuffs you don't really understand and told to just accept that it works. (Questions like "What is going on behind the scenes in this line of code?")

The instructor at Scrimba did great at explaining what every line of React code means, leaving no mysteries behind. He explained the motivation behind choosing React by showing what a line in React means in Vanilla JS. It really clears a lot of doubts and terms, especially when you first start to learn a new technology.

2. Full Stack Open (https://fullstackopen.com/en/)
An awesome resource that I can't recommend enough. Note that this course is not just about React, but it gives you an 'end-to-end' experience of developing a full-stack software using React for front-end. Even though it's not a React-only course, the React part is very comprehensive (covering even Redux). You can choose to only learn the React part of the course but I would really recommend completing the whole thing.

Here are why I really liked the course:

• Full picture

It first goes into the Fundamental of web applications before introducing React as the front-end and NodeJS as the back-end for creating REST APIs. It then gives you a feel of how testing works in the web. It then helps you setup a deployment pipeline using Github Actions (CI/CD) and helps you familiarize with Docker containerization. It goes all the way from developing to deploying both front and back-end application to production.

• Industry standard

I am a backend software engineer myself and I can relate to how much the course prepares you to work in the industry. It touches on a lot of aspects that makes a projects more realistic. For example, unit testing front and back-end, integration testing and end-to-end testing. These testings are very valuable in an actual production projects and yet, a lot of online classes missed them. It teaches you how to setup a CI/CD pipeline, manage configs separately for security reasons, containerize your applications, etc. There are a lot of best practices in this course!

• Practice!

Each module comes with its own set of exercises and I highly recommend that you complete those exercises. Learn programming by doing - only then the concepts, syntax and ideas can materialize in your mind. I always believed that the best way to learn is to practice it!

• "Modern and up-to-date"

Besides the fact that it is teaching React (one of the most popular front-end framework used in the industry), it also teaches NodeJS (another popular back-end framework) and uses Github Actions (for CI/CD) and Docker (containerization). In addition, this course is actively maintained and revised (you can see sections of the course that says its updated because of the ever-changing nature of software).

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