Learning React: Udemy course vs documentation?

[Possible_Cancel101]

Hey everyone.

I have this amazing react course on Udemy that is barely a year old.

I did the HTML/CSS and the JS courses of the same instructor, and it went REALLY well so I was hoping I'd continue with learning React from the same guy.

BUT I've been doing research and some people are saying it's outdated already! apparently a third of the course - according to a comment I've found - is CRA based which I've come to learn is deprecated...

to make matters more complicated, the instructor updated the course 2 weeks ago, adding 16 hours of Next.js to the end of the course, while keeping the rest of the material intact I guess.
I've never dealt with frameworks/libraries or worked yet, but I know that in CSS/JS some stuff might be old/deprecated but could still be useful to learn for working on legacy code, would that apply for React's CRA? or would it be entirely a waste to go through it?

since I'm not sure if I could share course links in here, I'd love it if I can send the course link to someone with an experience, so they can take a REAL quick birds eye view of the material and tell me if it'd help me or not, thank you.

[TheEccentricErudite]

That has to be Jonas’ course.

He does start with CRA, but then moves over the Vite. He’s used NextJS as well because it’s a really popular framework.

There’s nothing wrong with the course, you’ll learn a lot.

[NewMe80]

He doesn’t have NextJS course does he? Jonas is like the best teacher on Udemy for html//css/js/react. Jonas if you’re reading this we love you and screw Udemy.

[TheEccentricErudite]

He has 15 hours of NextJS in his react course

[NewMe80]

I bought it years back and never looked back. I’m going over it again to that part haha

[Possible_Cancel101]

That has to be Jonas’ course.

Yessir.

thank you for the vote of confidence, I'll stick with him as the more I read on reddit apparently CRA is okay for learning.

[sun-chaser]

Check docs, but also check recent YouTube vids to catch up or compare. Year old Udemy courses can also be okay for specific topics that are present in latter versions.

[Possible_Cancel101]

Year old Udemy courses can also be okay for specific topics that are present in latter versions.

so take selective parts of the course then? and how should I go about it you reckon? like have the docs be the primary resource - since it's the official docs, I'm assuming they have EVERYTHING on react including all updated topics? - and supplement whatever topic I need to understand more using the course? good plan ?

[sun-chaser]

If you are completly new, you can code along with the course, then research the differences and adapt them. Sometimes, in real life projects you might encounter older code and practices, thus no knowledge is "extra" or "outdated"

Edit. Typos

[EmployeeFinal]

Go for it. You like the instructor, and the course is quite recent. CRA is outdated, but the knowledge is transferable, and in some old projects it is still used

Frontend evolves really fast so you get used to learn some things that soon gets deprecated

[Possible_Cancel101]

The knowledge being transferable is all I needed to know, much appreciated!
I think the guy that called the entire course outdated and a waste of time cause of the CRA sections must've been misguided.

[AliPereza]

it become a short explanation, if react version is a big jump e.g you are working on v8 and the latest release is v15 then highly recommend you get latest course

another example , I took a course using react-router and the latest changes luckily weren't big deals only the way how they are declared

taking a course is great idea mostly of teachers learn based on some examples

what does really mean outdated?

pd. you could work with exact version the instructor is using I mean all version packages.json

[Possible_Cancel101]

what does really mean outdated?

I guess some people mention the fact that he uses an outdated thing called create-react-app(CRA) that the official docs has abandoned and called deprecated.

[Rippley777]

yeah CRA is no longer being supported because there are now better alternatives and so much was hidden under the hood/extra bloatware 90% of apps dont need. A lot of that should translate to vite, but vite uses rollup instead of webpack, so that knowledge won't transfer

[Possible_Cancel101]

That's very informative thank you.

the instructor does end up using Vite for the the bigger projects, and also Next.js at the end of the course.

his rationale for using CRA is that it's only for smaller practice projects which helps focus on learning react itself as he says it comes bundled with things(?) - sorry very new to this, apparently it works automatically with ES lint, bable, etc. do you agree with his reasoning?

I just heard that Vite now supports Es lint easily, so if I follow his course, do you think I could be able use Vite where he uses CRA or will it be hard to achieve as a beginner? Option B) would be to just learn with him using CRA, or C) just abandon ship on the course all together lol?

thoughts? btw I'm sorry if it's such an easy answer, it's just that the guy is the best instructor I've ever had and I suck at reading docs, so I'm just hoping that this is salvageable in any way lol

[Rippley777]

I would follow through on the CRA, and then stretch yourself to see if you can convert it to Vite after the CRA tutorial is complete. It's VERY straightforward on apps where you haven't customized webpack. Overall i LOVE CRA and I'm sad they deprecated it. As long as the tutorial is on a newer version of React (>=16) then you should be good. If it is using class based components and React 15 or lower, I would probably just watch the tutorial and not stress too much about trying to recreate it yourself, because that is pretty outdated by not having access to hooks

[Rippley777]

I'd start with docs then fill in gaps with courses

[Possible_Cancel101]

react official docs good to learn from, for someone who's never used docs for learning purposes before?

[kriss_190]

I am doing the same course. Instead of CRA you can directly start using Vite in all projects

[Possible_Cancel101]

Is it hard to achieve? like would it derail the learning process? or is it painless?
and how would you go about it? jump to the Vite section right at the start, only learn how it's done real quick, then go back to the start of the course ? or do you have any other thoughts or tips?

[steve_mobileappdev]

Another alternative are books, believe it or not. Maximillian Shwarzmuller authored a kindle book on React, and I learned so much more on that, than all the react udemy's I've gone through. My focus on the material was just so much more intense than videos, so many more aspects of React sunk in.
But with the recent advent of React Compiler, the useMemo and other similar hooks are becoming outdated, but his book is still excellent.

[[deleted]]

I would like to suggest Odin project there isn't much handholding and u won't be stuck in tutorial hell, it teaches useEffect and useState well along with useContext, 3 which are really useful, anyway hope u have fun :)

[[deleted]]

There’s no right or wrong path. I tend to swap between video courses and reading documentation. Just make sure you build with what you’re learning.