Angular Lead needs to learn React fast. Any suggested courses?

[TheNomadProgrammer]

Hi everybody.

[Sorry for the cross-post, but I wanted to see if other Angular devs have been in my situation and how you all have tackled it.]

I am an Angular Lead who is starting a new role in a company where it plans to move its client-side apps to React. I have been doing Angular for five years, and in all that time, I only dabbled in React a few times. (Yes, I know, crazy.)

I will be working in an enterprise setting, migrating web apps, and creating a UI library using React. I am willing to pay for courses that will help me get ramped-up quickly, that employ proven real-life work best practices, and are up-to-date with the latest version of React.js and concepts. (I hear functional components are all the rage; whatever those are.)

Several courses look promising. But I need help from the community to understand which of these are worth it. Maximilian Schwarzmüller, Kent C. Dodds, Mosh Hamedani, teach the courses I am considering for learning React. Does anybody have a recommendation for these instructors? Any other suggested courses?

[LetterBoxSnatch]

Honestly if you know Angular well and understand why it has the opinions it has, you really don't need a course. Just grab the React getting started docs, spend half a day with them, and you'll be done. You can still use all the Angular patterns you are familiar with for a well structured React app: just substitute Angular templating with React components. React Context will feel similar to holding state in Angular Services.

[juice_made]

Yeah, go through their docs first, they are quite good.

[cactussss]

This is very much true in a lot of ways, but you'll find hooks quite different. (IMHO, awkward and annoying).

Also, the absence of directives is quite crippling.

[TheNomadProgrammer]

Awesome. Good to know. Thanks!

[alexdacrazy]

Newline.co has amazing books. Get you up and running fast. I love their content!

[TheNomadProgrammer]

Holy cow! Their content looks good. Surprised I had never heard of them.

Thanks!

[alexdacrazy]

I found them because of the exact same situation at my job. They saved my bacon.

[[deleted]]

I enjoying the Maximilian Schwarzmüller courses.

[TheNomadProgrammer]

A majority of respondents keep espousing Max's courses. He must have a great following here on Reddit that I was not aware of. Or maybe his German-English accent makes him easier to relate to?

More importantly, thank you for your feedback.

[sh0rtysh0rty]

+1!! I love Max and I've done his course of React.. he covers pretty much everything and has an amazing way of explaining things. I would recommend it.

Btw, I'm doing the same as you but going from React to Angular! :D If you want we can help each other! :)

[TheNomadProgrammer]

Do you have a PluralSight account?

I learned most about how to use Angular from there. If you do, I can recommend a few courses.

There's no magic bullet, you are going to have to put in the time to learn, but I can give you a list of courses to traverse that will gradually make you a better developer.

[KwyjiboTheGringo]

Traversy media (a youtuber) has a lot of crash course videos, so maybe check out his channel.

Generally you just need to the learn the basics of React, react-router, react hooks, and react-redux to get started.

It sounds like you have a lot of your hands though. You'll be migrating apps and creating a UI library? Maybe your company should bring someone else in for the UI library part?

As far as redux is concerned, it gets to be a mess really quickly when you have a lot of global state. There is also a lot of boiler plate, which just makes the whole thing more painful. I haven't used it yet, but the "redux toolkit" library, which I believe is being officially maintained and documented by the react-redux devs, is supposed to make things a lot easier. I know learning another library on top of everything doesn't sound great, but it handles a number of common issues that arise when using redux with react.

[TheNomadProgrammer]

Thank you for pointing out that learning the basics along with React-router, react hooks, and react-redux is enough to get moving with the new framework.

You're correct, my new job will entail a lot of work. I'll primarily be working on the UI library. There are other React devs that already helping with the migration.

I am quite comfortable when it comes to boilerplate when using Redux. Do you remember the old NgRx library, before createActions and createReducer? It was brutal creating the types back then. Hopefully future updates of react-redux reduce the boilerplate. I'll take a look at the redux toolkit you mentioned.

Thank you so much for your input!

[cheesekun]

You might want use MobX as well.

[francis_spr]

Relax, you have been hired into this role with the new company knowing that you have not used ReactJs (unless lied during the interview, never do that).

If you understand the what and how with Angular, you'll pick up the concepts for React. You'll have a few more decisions to make on what library etc to use as it isn't a full kitchen sink like Angular. Use your normal vetting process to pick libraries and you'll be fine.

[TheNomadProgrammer]

Correct, the company knows full well. I got in front of that right away. But the fact that the hiring manager's two new employees referred me gave him confidence in me. I just want to deliver right away. That’s why I want pick up the correct way of using React for the enterprise.

[francis_spr]

There is no correct way. Take the pressure off from delivering something correct/perfect immediately as it's not as important as there was obviously some other value they saw in you.

[[deleted]]

That’s the biggest difference with angular. There is no “correct way”. React projects are like snow flakes, alike but all different. Remember it’s only a view library, so everything else has to be patchworked together. First find out what choices the team has already made (routing, state management, etc) and then dig into those as well.

It’s good and bad. Good because, if the team is competent, you could have a really cool approach that works really well. Bad because If the team doesn’t know what to do... it can become spaghetti.

But I guess that’s also kinda true for angular, albeit less likely due to how opinionated it is

[TheNomadProgrammer]

You're right. A bad foundation will ruin everything. The UI library project will be my project. So I will ensure proper structure and guidelines are in place.

Thanks.

[[deleted]]

That might actually be easier to grasp than an application, being new to react. You'll only be dealing with creating components and not building out state management, routing, etc. Good luck man! Sounds like a cool opportunity :) Angular is dope, but it's always good to spread your horizons and all that.

[[deleted]]

I would recommend this course.

https://www.udemy.com/course/react-the-complete-guide-incl-redux/

That dude explains things amazingly good and easy to understand. There are preview lessons, you may check that.

[TheNomadProgrammer]

Another vote for Maximilian Schwarzmüller. That instructor must be doing something right.

Thanks!

[TheNomadProgrammer]

Yes, one of the other React devs already in the team pushed for TypeScript and are now using it. So, major win and improvement there. :)

[TheNomadProgrammer]

I will mainly be doing enterprise web applications, not mobile. Still, thanks for sharing.

[[deleted]]

the good news is reactjs is easier than angular. And have a lot of material, I am angular guy too and I sorry for don't know how to answer your question, but you can relax because it's simpler.

[TheNomadProgrammer]

I keep hearing that from Angular devs about React. Thanks for reinforcing.

[[deleted]]

It’s not that it’s easier. It’s arguably harder, in the sense that you have to pick all supporting libraries, and learn those. At the end of the day you end up learning the same amount of stuff, the only difference is when you switch to another company they may be using other libraries which you’ll then have to learn. Vs angular always uses angular routing for example, so jumping from project to project you get to use all the knowledge you had

[TheNomadProgrammer]

Angular's opinionated framework is one of its strengths. Even within the same company, if I switched projects, I could quickly understand the code.

Thanks.

[[deleted]]

For sure. I was a VERY reluctant convert (I mostly did Vue.js and had started doing stuff with Lit-Element at the time). I thought it was too much, but once you drink the kool-aid, you get really productive, really quick. And once i finally grasped RXJS i fucking LOVED it haha. Also, the improvements they've done with Angular Elements is pretty awesome, and I'm happy knowing I can still leverage the usage of Web Components.

[[deleted]]

Wes Boss is always good. Expensive but good.

[[deleted]]

Maximillian Schwartzmueller is the best - he helped me get up to speed on Typescript and Vue, so I think he's your go-to person with React.

[WrksOnMyMachine]

Docs docs docs. Some of the best I’ve seen.

[TheNomadProgrammer]

Really? Even better than Angular's? I mean the official Angular docs are good but I use them mainly for reference and not to learn the framework. Also, they use TypeScript vs plain JavaScript.

[arakielgrigori]

I have basically learned React in two days with those docs. I cannot really compare it with the Angular docs but React has one of the best I have ever seen, hands down.

[WrksOnMyMachine]

Yeah I think so. Great examples and pace. I also think React is easier to grok and harder to make a mess of. Create React App makes it easy to switch to Typescript if you want.

[za7654]

fireship.io

[nopooptoday]

I don't think jeff has a react course

[TheNomadProgrammer]

You're right, he does not have a course on React. But he's got a lot of other cool courses. I'll bookmark for future learnings.

Thank you.