React: Some comments from a beginner

BeanBurrito
2024-04-16T08:00:20Z

New job. I've been wanting to learn something new for a while, so I took a project where a lot of React is done. I'm learning it from scratch while I work with React.

I have some comments about it.

1. React makes front end work a lot more like programming -- I like that!

2. Javascript has changed a lot, and for the better, since I last used it over a decade ago.

3. The React-Redux tool kit is the bomb. It should be integrated/absorbed into React. I can't see any reason not to use it, even for small applications as it is less wordy wherever you use it.

4. The updating of state values should be more automatic, especially for flag variables not tied to GUI components. It is the major source of hassles with React

5. Udemy React videos. My company makes them available free of charge to employees. I've sampled videos from a number of courses. I'm not a fan of the instructors showing you how to do things in older, less efficient ways first in a learning/demo project, the ERASING that code to do it a better way. The should include copies of the project at each stage if they do that. I finally figured out that the best way to take notes I can use later is to comment out the old code and put the new more efficient next stage stuff on top.

6. React tests really need to improve. They are often more time consuming than the code itself. The tests have forced me to change my code or do needless testing to get the tests to pass. I had one situation where no matter what I did React test said I didn't cover the code until I broke an else clause off into it's one if clause. Blech.

All in all I've been enjoying learning React. It is neat new ( to me ) thing.

I feel sad that I will likely forget it all when I go back to my specialty language.

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