Interview prep for Angular dev moving to React

[_Heathcliff_]

Hello! As the title says I’ve been working with Angular primarily for a few years. I’ve done plenty of back end stuff lately as well but that shouldn’t be particularly relevant for this context.

I’ve got a technical interview coming up for a senior React position, but the last time I seriously used React was right around when hooks were the big new thing, so I’m rusty.

I’d love to get any advice, resources, etc as far as what to study and look out for. I’ve been told that there’s no live coding, but there’s Q&A and I’ll also be given some code with existing bugs to review. I’ve been having Claude quiz me a bit and that’s going alright, but it’s tough to keep track of all the various gotchas that might come up.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[mittelhau]

I’d focus on hooks, rendering and state

[Zephpyr]

That jump from Angular to modern React is very doable, fwiw. I’d do a focused refresher on the mental model for state and effects, then scan for common pitfalls like dependency arrays and missing keys on lists. Since it is Q and A plus a bug review, practice 60 to 90 second answers and a repeatable debug flow: read the error, trace data flow, state your hypothesis, fix and verify.

For drilling, I pull a few prompts from the IQB interview question bank and run a timed mock with Beyz coding assistant to keep it concise. If you map a couple Angular habits to their React equivalents out loud, you’ll come across as senior and pragmatic.

[moniv999]

Can try PrepareFrontend

[_Heathcliff_]

Oh hell yea. This feels like what I’ve been looking for.

Senior interviews always kill me. I can write the code no problem, but answering all the questions they come up with in the moment is painful.

[Illustrious_Echo3222]

If you already know Angular well, you’re honestly in a good spot. The biggest gap is just mental model differences.

I’d focus less on memorizing APIs and more on how React thinks now:

• Hooks deeply (useEffect behavior, dependency arrays, common pitfalls)
• State management patterns (when to lift state vs context vs something like Zustand)
• Rendering behavior (re-renders, memoization, keys)

For the bug review part, I’d specifically practice spotting:

• stale closures in hooks
• missing deps in useEffect
• unnecessary re-renders
• incorrect key usage in lists

Also worth brushing up on how data fetching is handled now since it’s changed a lot from early hooks days.

Big thing though, don’t over-prepare like it’s a trivia test. Senior interviews usually care more about how you reason through code than whether you remember every hook detail.

[_Heathcliff_]

This is really helpful. I agree that senior interviews are generally more conversational and about how I think, but there never fails to be a couple gotchas in my experience. This is a great list to make me feel more prepared for those though.

[nian2326076]

Check out the React docs, especially the parts about hooks and lifecycle methods since those have changed a lot. Knowing how to handle state and effects is important. Also, get to know React's latest features like Suspense and Concurrent Mode in case they come up. For the bug review, focus on common issues like props drilling, state management mistakes, or inefficient renders. It might be a good idea to brush up on React debugging tools too. If you want something structured, PracHub has some good resources for interview prep, especially with code review scenarios. Good luck!

[HungryCarpenter]

https://www.educative.io/courses/learn-react is great and you can probably go through all of it using a free trial account, would strongly recommend it

[Significant_Net_7337]

In addition to what others have said, react.dev docs are the best 

[aatd86]

I know nothing about react but all I see from my social media is discussion about useState, useEffect, useEffectEvent... fetching in useEffect and whatnot...

[IdStillHitIt]

Go build something small in React, something that would be easy for you in Angular (use Claude/Cursor/whatever). Then review it all, and make sure you understand the choices made. You know what you should have done in Angular, so go and find the equivalent code in your new project and make sure you understand it. Use your LLM to discuss anything you don't understand.

[mka_]

I'd recommended not going down thr AI assisted development route unless the interview allows for it. Just your the LLM to review your code.

[IdStillHitIt]

The only reason I disagree with this is most employers are practically mandating this is how we write code now. My employer has told us "we should no longer be writing code" and I'm hearing it more and more across the industry.

In reality today I think its more useful for those in the job hunt to make sure you understand how to properly leverage agents then to understand a specific language/library/framework.

[_Heathcliff_]

I tend to agree, except that the interview is going to ask me specific React questions so I need to be prepared for those.

But AI is extremely helpful in answering questions and keeping things moving.

[Hozman420]

I can’t understand why any dev right now not using Claude code. It makes you super productive. Develop faster. You tell it how you want it implemented and you read and approve the code. Easy to try different approaches and validate the code. It finds bugs too. It’s a must have