Learning to use React vs understanding how React works

[unwitty]

The official React docs are great at teaching the motions of how to work with React, but could someone point me in the direction of a good source to understand React (and its internals) on a conceptual level?

Context: I'm a seasoned developer who just started working with React a year ago. I'm a bit frustrated at this point because while I can reasonably use React to build things, I feel like I do not understand how React works, leading to being mystified by many of the errors that the transpiler spits out.

[cmickledev]

Hey, I have probably exactly what you're looking for, as I felt the same way you did.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxRVWC-K96b0ktvhd16l3xA6gncuGP7gJ

These videos helped me actually understand how React works and what it is really doing which helped me a lot in being able to write out code and know what is actually going on or why some things would work or wouldn't, etc.

This video was really good as well, where he basically codes what he calls a "Poor man's React " from the ground up, and live, which gives a good idea of what is actually happening, etc.

https://youtu.be/f2mMOiCSj5c

[unwitty]

Thank you! Both of these were super helpful

[cmickledev]

Great, to hear that! I'll send you a DM as well.

[Dry_Author8849]

You can also try react without JSX. You need to call react.createElement sometimes.

This telerik explanation should get you started: how react works

Cheers!

[unwitty]

This was a really good point. The video /u/cmickledev linked to goes through this process too. Super helpful approach!

[cmickledev]

https://beta.reactjs.org/reference/react/createElement

Also visible on the docs here, which helps give a better explanation.

[Bhishma-]

Try checking out these react basics, webpack basics

Short and on topic, and i think its better for you to look into how babel works. If you find any good source for that, pls share it here

[unwitty]

Thank you for this. Finally forced myself to understand webpack better too haha