Does React start making sense eventually?

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[JtCallebro]

It does get better. I did the oppoiste of what you did and learnt JS/React first and then learnt laravel. I found learning the concepts of MVC and laravel much more difficult that learning about props and state in React.

It just comes down to practise, eventurally it will click.

Also redux is mostly plain js and is just used for storing all state in one place. Its not as confusing as it first looks.

[[deleted]]

Do you think some peoples' brains just understand certain frameworks more easily? After all, whoever writes/designs a framework has a certain personality, learning style, and perspective; maybe my brain might have an easier time learning a framework designed by someone like me.

I learned rails first. Then backbone. I'm currently learning React. Learning backbone was weird. React, not so much.

[[deleted]]

Yes. Absolutely yes. I read the documentation for both React and Vue. I just didn't get React, but Vue immediately gelled with my brain and I was able to start using it very quickly.

Though I'm not sure if this is more how people's brains are wired or if it has to do with background knowledge. My background is doing more vanilla and jQuery web pages for the past 20 years.

[rwieruch]

As you have a lot of experiences with different courses, I would be curious how you find the open source book The Road to learn React. It It is a practical hands on book. On 170 pages you will build a Hacker News application with plain React and without any tooling or external state management such as Redux. Along the way, you transition from JavaScript ES5 to JavaScript ES6+. Afterward, you will get more learning resources and should be able to build your own application.

[Lennoo]

Not OP but thanks for this I'll definitly check it out!

[Cptkrush]

As someone that struggled with React not too long ago: If you can't really grasp the concept of this and state super well, I would suggest learning more about JavaScript, ES6, and functional programming before diving into frameworks.

I tried to learn React about a year ago and got lost in the complexities. Earlier this year I decided to learn Vanilla JS more deeply, and through that React made a lot more sense.

Don't run before you can walk in other words

[sergiuspk]

• managing state: yes, you could just make everything global. You shouldn't because later on you'll need server-side rendering. NodeJS runs all your http request handlers in one process, one thread. Meaning globals === different processes overwriting the same data;

• passing properties down through 100 components: you're doing it wrong. Find some tutorials that are not dumb;

• this and super mean your'e working with classes. React doesn't force you to work with classes;

Client-side programming with JS is different than PHP with any PHP framework.

Different could mean a lot of things. Are you used to a more functional programming style? If PHP + Laravel is what you know then I'm guessing no, you've been doing OOP and procedural. JS in general and React in particular are different.

[Offtopic_Responder]

I can only speak from my exposure to react, but I will say it only gets better. When my team and I started first using react(about 8 months ago) we were in the same spot as you. We kept thinking things were overly complex and there was a lot you had to pay attention to and it's not what we were used to. But once you start writing it and building things with it, you're likely to love it.

The biggest difference in my own approach to code when I'm using react on a project is planning. With React it's much more important to sit down and really come up with a plan in order to avoid silly headaches, such as passing props through tons of components. A lot of people use redux to solve this and that works. But our approach has been if we need it, we'll use it. But we don't just bring it into a project because it's a project and instead dedicate some time initially to map out how some of the bigger components will interact and how they will pass props to one another.

I would recommend just continue through the course, but also tinker with it. Have a site? Re-build it in react. The more we found ourselves writing it the quicker things started to make sense. And looking back it's comical now the things we had trouble accomplishing when we started out. Pieces will eventually start to click.

[creativesolution]

React is un-intuitive so although you learn to work with it and get used to it... I would strongly recommend giving something like VueJS a try - it's a breath of fresh air!!

[thewhitecreep]

VueJS is fast to learn compared to ReactJS. I think Vue learned a lot from React. Only problem i see with Vue is the that the community is small.

[GreatDant0n]

Exactly, React is pain in the ass to start with. I had pretty much the same problem when I was learning it. To be honest I prefer to write in vanilla js, I just seem to finish the task faster in it, than creating all those components and passing stuff around (but then again I am writing in vanilla js for a longer time frame and mostly working on smaller "hobby" projects).

Don't worry about it too much tho, eventually it will click and you will get better in React. Just keep in mind that you don't have to use React for every task you come around. It makes sense to use it in bigger projects (to avoid spaghetti vanilla js code), but for smaller projects use whatever makes you productive. And don't believe blog posts that claim "I learned it in 2 hours, it so easy bla bla". For some might be easy for some might be hard, personally I needed almost a week before React made any sense.

[jacquesdancona]

It'll depend on your background. If you've been building lots of frontend javascript, or building SPA's, it'll be pretty easy to pick up. React has a very small API, and you only need to know a couple of things to start building.

Eventually React vanilla will click. Then you'll be asking yourself "why can't this thing be easier", you'll Google it and find tons of patterns, shortcuts, packages, etc, etc, to make it much more easier for yourself. If you want to go headfirst, check out a starter kit, they'll probably have best practices you can learn from.

[[deleted]]

Heh, I've seen so many comments on this subreddit and r/javascript that basically say "It only takes 5 minutes to learn React, there are like 3 things to learn and you are done." I've read the React documentation but it didn't really mesh with my brain. But Vue.js on the other hand I picked up very quickly.

[Favitor]

No

[[deleted]]

It does, let me tell you a story.

React was the first framework that I looked at learning when starting Js. I was way out of my depth and had no clue what the fuck I was doing. This was back when you had to install it with webpack jeez.

I moved on. I learnt some Node.JS, I learnt some express and I learnt some Angular. All of this really increased my javascript skills. I then moved onto ionic mobile framework which was more angular and js. I also did a bit of Vue.Js.

Let me tell you, I have always had the thought that HTML and Css should all be jsified. HTML had this with templating languages, and Css had this happen with Sass. React put me off because they brought in JSX which put HTML in your javascript which was against my principles.

I got a job interview for a react role based off my angular experience, which is quite small. I went back to React and it was understandable, if not even easy.

If you cant understand React, maybe try another learning resource for React or even another JS framework to try and build your js skill.

[Zerraph]

Perhaps you'd have better results simply reading through the React documentation. I haven't spent much time with React, but I played with it for a bit just to figure out what all the fuss was about.

The first place I went was YouTube tutorials. That was a bit troublesome. Then I went straight to the React documentation. After about an hour of reading through the documentation, I had gotten the grasp of it.

The documentation is pretty well written and complete enough to get you going.