Learning React JS

2020-02-03

My career as a UI Developer has mostly been styling pages using CSS.

Making web applications look good cross-browser while being mobile friendly is hard. CSS is a huge topic that many technical authors have written books about.

One of my favorites is: The Book of CSS3, 2nd Edition: A Developer's Guide to the Future of Web Design

To be able to build the kind of interactive applications I dream about, I need something more than CSS.

So I've been learning React for the last month. Here's the resources I'm using:

Resources

Learning Milestones

ES6+ aka ECMAScript2015
What is a React component?
ReactDOM rendering
Class vs functional components
JSX
State
Event handling
Asynchronous setState
Props
Refs

My goal is to learn enough to add interactive projects to my portfolio. Here's a few ideas I'm considering.

React Projects

Use Gatsby.js (built on React) to create a portfolio with a blog.
To Do list
Social Media App like Twitter
E-Commerce App
Media App
Messaging App

Learning React is going to take time and practice. But so far I'm enjoying the journey.