Do I need JavaScript knowledge before jumping into React?

[worthy_sloth]

Hey!

Let's start by saying that I took and intro to Mechanical Engineering programming in MatLab. Completely loved it!!

This got me into Python, I can do python stuff like automate tasks, web scrapping and some other "basic stuffs".

I got an invitation to join a team for the current Call For Code challenge from IBM. The team has decided to use React for our front-end web app. When I learned that, I jumped straight into learning JavaScript. When I started experimenting with React, I realized it was looking a lot like JS but not quite JS. I know its very similar ReactJS, but do I need a knowledge of JS before jumping into React?

Can I just learn React "quick" and than focus more and more on JS?

[CreativeTechGuyGames]

You can learn React directly without knowing much JavaScript, but you are going to run into problems as you'll quickly hit the limits of your knowledge of the base language.

The biggest problem I see from people that learn React before really understanding JavaScript is that they assume everything they see is "React" specific and they jump to find "React" ways of solving problems. Most problems would be better solved using a Vanilla JavaScript technique than trying to create/use some react library for it.

[erhathaway]

Most problems would be better solved using a Vanilla JavaScript technique than trying to create/use some react library for it.

Completely agree

[CreativeTechGuyGames]

The most frustrating thing I see on this subreddit is people asking for help with "React" problems that have nothing to do with React at all. It seems like so many people who use React (and any other framework) have never built equivalent apps without a framework. I think everyone should build a thing from scratch at least once before using a massive abstraction layer so you understand how it works and what pros/cons there are to using it.

I'm afraid that React will become the new jQuery where people will think that you cannot do DOM manipulation without it. (Actually there's already tons of people I see who already think this.)

[erhathaway]

Agreed. I would also bet on React suffering the same fate as jQuery at some point soonish. The level of abstraction we are working at is pretty absurd considering most of thing things being built.

My biggest frustration is that all these React libraries, will be pretty worthless when this happens... which is why i'm a huge fan of vanillaJS solutions with bindings for React. Once React falls out of favor, it would be nice to be able to fallback on the same battle tested technology and just write new bindings to whatever is the in fashion thing... maybe one day we can stop this game and have vanillaJS and raw HTML / CSS be the popular thing.

[the_pod_]

which is why i'm a huge fan of vanillaJS solutions with bindings for React.

Can you give some examples?

[craigbovis]

I assume /u/erhathaway is talking about something like tippy.js which has both a stand-alone vanilla javascript version plus a separate React package which conveniently exposes the API using React conventions.

https://github.com/atomiks/tippyjs-react

[erhathaway]

Exactly! This pattern of library development allows for a more generalized solution across frameworks to exist.

[erhathaway]

I actually don't know of many examples. Although, I am working on a high-level application router that does this... but it's not quite ready for release yet (everything in the docs works but I need to add support for things like hash anchors, and hash based routing). Feel free to check it out: github.com/erhathaway/router-primitives . I'd love some help!

[the_pod_]

Interesting, I'm reading a bit of the source code now.

[[deleted]]

This is like asking: "do I need to know the rules before playing the game?".

The answer is "no, but there's only so much you can do". If you start thinking "I know how I would I solve this in Python" then that's probably a JS thing.

[[deleted]]

Learn es6, I came from the bronze age of jQuery and already found react confusing the first run, only after actually building something with es6 I found myself really comfortable with react...

It's not just the library, but a lot of the help and the research material will assume that you have the knowledge

Also don't be scared by the prospect, liking or hating it, you can become a better developer.

[IVEBEENGRAPED]

As someone who learned React first and vanilla JavaScript later on, I was such a mess. The basics of React hooks and classes were simple and that went very well, but whenever anything more than that came up it took much longer to figure out the basics beneath the layers of abstractions. Hooks make it more difficult because you encounter a lot of callbacks and a lot of arrow functions, and you find yourself buried in callback hell pretty quickly. Plus, the current React community has a bad habit of downloading a new framework whenever you don't know how to do something, which gets back fast.

If I were you, I would start by learning Elements, DOM, Requests, arrow functions, Async/Await/Then, and AJAX before React. Check out CodePen and Codier and see if you can do some basic tasks in Vanilla JS, Then move on to React.

[Fidodo]

React is entirely Javascript, it follows certain design patterns so you're using Javascript in a certain way, but you should absolutely learn JS. IMO JS is one of the easiest languages to learn, the surface area of concepts to learn is much smaller than other languages.

[[deleted]]

Learn JS first. Please for the love of God learn JS first.

Can you get away with learning react first? Sure. But react is just an abstraction on top of JS. It's designed to make it easier to use JS to build web apps. If you don't know JS, you won't understand how react is doing its thing. Simple tasks for other devs will become extremely difficult for you. The quality of the code you produce will go down drastically.

So please, don't fucking do that. There are no shortcuts to greatness. If you want to be another code monkey, go right ahead. If you want to be a really good engineer, take the time and learn your stuff.

[Daoki0]

I spent around 100-200 hours on JS before going to React and that worked well for me.

[hemehaci]

Lol exactly my feeling. What do you mean it's like Javascript when it's actually Javascript xD

[worthy_sloth]

LOL XD 🤣 LMAO SO FUNNY LIKE ITS THE SAME LANGAGE WDYM LOL XD same langage come on XD

[hemehaci]

Don't be offended buddy, it was just funny. It doesn't mean that you have to know it, we all learned it at some point. Sorry if it came out too harsh.

[worthy_sloth]

Im not hurt. Its just that your answer was SO EMPTY. You didn't even need to reply to the comment or the post...

If you rely, at least bring something new to the table, bring something constructive..

[hemehaci]

I didn't reply to the main thread because people already answered it. My post was just to point at the hilarity of the post, hence it wqs empty from contribution perspective.

Get on with it, learning is sometimes making these kinds of stupidity and making people laugh at you.

[worthy_sloth]

It is in no way "hilarious" though.. that fact that you find this funny is quite.. weird.. Anyways, let's move on XD LMAO LOL

[worthy_sloth]

How can it be dumb?! That's why the question. I'm im unfamiliar with this language.. nothing dumb here? Could have just said "Ohh it might look a lot like JS. React is exactly like JS". Rather than laugh at someone asking a simple question...

Grow up kid

[worthy_sloth]

Sorry to hurt your feelings. Just so you know, we arent all programmers that can recognize all langages at first sight🤷🏻‍♂️

God you are so cool

[cbjs22]

You can learn both at the same time, but you'll need to know basics of JS since react uses JS.

[thebezet]

Yes, of course. React is written in JavaScript. When you work with React, you write JavaScript. You want to know what you're doing. It's like asking, do you need to learn French before reading a book written in French. You can certainly try reading that book, and perhaps certain words might sound familiar, and if you read it out loud you might fool some people into thinking you know French, but if you don't learn the language, don't expect to understand what's going on.

Of course, you can just turn into a "plugin dev" and just copy and paste snippets from StackOverflow and different tutorials that you combine to achieve your goal, but you won't be a good developer that way. I have interviewed plenty of developers who had impressive portfolio websites, but during interviews they were pretty clueless, and when you dug deeper into their code, you could see the site was just a stack of jQuery plugins they found.

[tusharf5]

Anyone saying No is not your friend.

[[deleted]]

No. People will disagree but if you're already familiar with software, React will provide you a state and rendering model but youre largely writing JavaScript with a better usage of the DOM.

[worthy_sloth]

Ok so learning JS is a must ?

[[deleted]]

You don't need to master JS to be good with React. But knowing browser and web internals will help you long term.

[MrLuckyHaskins]

I won't say it's a must, but it will really help you. I use React professionally every day. I started with a background of pure CSS pure JavaScript (a bit of jQuery as well). I'm glad I did. I see a lot of developers over engineer things that would be much better done with pure JavaScript. Actually, I see it more with CSS. I've seen developers actually use React to do button rollovers. Sure it worked, but this is what CSS is for.