React Progress

Over the past week, I’ve begin my journey into learning React. I outlined my React learning plan in an earlier post, but I wanted to give an update.

Reading

I kicked off my React learning with a bit of reading. Even though it’s a bit older, I read about the first 100 pages (so far) of Learning React by Alex Banks and Eve Porcello. I found that it was useful for giving a high level overview of React and familiarizing myself with some of the basic concepts. The section on functional programming was also helpful as that approach is utilized extensively in React.

Meetups & Workshops

This week was the first React Meetup in my town. While the talk was billed as an “Intro to React”, it ended up being a presentation on React Hooks. Because I had been doing some reading and working through the freeCodeCamp React curriculum, I didn’t feel that lost — which I count as progress.

I also participated in an online “Intro to React” workshop as part of the JavaScript for Wordpress. It featured a code along exercise where we made a basic React photo gallery with a lightbox modal. It was a great way to walk through React, use Create React App, and get a real world example. As part of this conference, I also watch a couple sessions on React and WordPress, including one on GatsbyJS which were nice in that they gave more pracitical examples of using React.

Classes

I have been working through the React portion of the freeCodeCamp Front End Libraries curriculum. So far, it has covered the basics of JSX, creating components (function and class based), props, and state. I like the freeCodeCamp approach of reading a brief overview and then doing a small exercise to reinforce the concept discussed. I’m looking forward to continuing to work through the exercises and then plan to do the final projects using React.

I also did my first Lynda.com/LinkedIn course, React.js: Essential Learning. It was a nice introduction and was particularly strong compared to freeCodeCamp in that we setup the project using Create React App, learned how to do a build, etc. The course was a nice overview and very hands on, which was great. I definitely felt like it was a good supplment to the freeCodeCamp course.

Onward

I am going to keep plugging away. I feel like I’m making good progress and am looking forward to learning more and building some projects.