The 5 Step Process For Learning React in 2024

🎥 This Week’s Video

Many developers or software engineers don’t know really where to start when it comes to the “data” side of things.

Perhaps they want to get their feet wet with machine learning, or data analysis, or simply just learning more about the AI explosion that seems to be underway.

Sure there are a lot of courses out there to take and things to learn, but let’s just start today with setting up a Python environment conducive to all things “data” such as:

• Reading CSVs with Pandas

• Plotting charts and graphs with Matplotlib

• Even creating machine learning models with Sci-kit Learn or Tensorflow.

Sure these are more suited to data scientists and machine learning engineers, but with the direction things are headed, I think all programmers should take their Python skills and at least try to understand these tools.

So my video for the week is “How To Set Up A Python Environment For All Things Data.”

Give it a watch!

🎓How to Learn React in 2024

React is alive and well. And each month I get a handful of people asking me for a path forward in learning React. There are lots of resources out there.

Where to begin? And where to end?

Here is my 5-step process:

1. First, learn JavaScript

This should be a given, but I can’t count the number of people thinking about learning React without a decent understanding of JavaScript.

I mean, you don’t need to know all the theories and gotchas of JavaScript, but you should feel comfortable working in it.

If you already know it, move to #2. If not, grab this course and work through it. Remember never to pay over $15 for a Udemy course. Check this page for all the latest coupons.

2. You must learn ES6 PRIOR to React

ES6 is at the forefront of React JS and you will not be able to make sense of it if you aren’t familiar with the ES6 JavaScript syntax.

ES6, or ECMAScript 2015, was the second major revision to JavaScript. And there were some pretty big differences introduced. I, myself, put it off for quite a while and it set me back (being the only one still using var out there).

If you feel pretty good with JavaScript, then be sure you also know about these new ES6 offerings:

• let/const vs var

• arrow functions

• mapping over objects

• destructuring

• classes

• spread operator

• template literals

• promises with async/await

The reason you need to be familiar with these concepts is that you will see them constantly in React JS.

A good resource is this 1-hour YouTube video by the JS master himself, Maximilian Schwarzmüller.

3. Take this ENTIRE Udemy course

So you know JS and ES6. Now you can move full speed ahead with learning React.

And you will do so with this ONE React course. There are, of course, many React courses out there, but ultimately you learn the same things in them all. Pick ONE and stick with it.

Here’s my personal recommendation out of the 8 React related Udemy courses that I own:

4. You MUST learn how to manage State

Whether it’s React, Little State Machine, or React’s own Context API, you have to learn state management (yeah I know that term may not fit all three).

State management is simply the management of data-sharing across components.

If you’ve worked with React and you want to pass props to a component 5 “generations” over, it’s a pain. I remember when I decided to create a React notetaker app from scratch and having the problem present itself. How do I manage all these props being sent in every direction? “Ohh, so that’s what Redux or Context is for!”

State management solutions allow you to manage your state in one place and ultimately make your components more manageable and reusable.

My suggestion would be to learn the Context API. Learn about The Context Object, Provider, and Consumer. The concepts learned here will make it easy to shift to a bigger solution like Redux.

If you purchased Brad Schiff’s React course that I mentioned above, then you will learn all about the Context API.

5. Build an intermediate project from scratch

This is the bread-and-butter moment. This is where you choose an app, like a notetaker app or bike rental app, and build it from scratch.

When I got serious about React, and after taking a Udemy course, I decided to build a notetaker app from scratch.

You could create notes in a WYSIWYG editor and save them, update and delete them, sort them, and all kinds of nice React rendering fun.

And I hit a LOT of roadblocks that caused me to dig into the documentation like, “How do I make an API call every time a component is updated? (useEffect).”

I learned hooks deeply, I learned Redux, how to nicely structure the project, and I wrestled with things breaking or acting differently than they were supposed to.

It was the BEST most informative exercise I could do to learn React well.

And this is what I suggest for you.

Think up an app idea and build it…from scratch. Wrestle with it. Make it work. Dig into the documentation.

You will come out the other end with many, many more skills than you would by taking more Udemy courses on React JS.

😱 Interesting Takes From The Week

Thanks for reading!

Travis