react resources

A list of resources I’ve found useful in learning about React

The Essentials

1. Thinking in React - From the official React (beta) docs - a quick intro to how to go about making a React component, and avoiding getting overwhelmed when building one out
2. React is Fiction - No one thing has done more to help me philosophically align with the React ecosystem than this video.
3. The How and Why of Flexible React Components - The more practical version of “React is Fiction” - get into the weeds and start building components! I watch this and "React is Fiction" every few months and it continues to act as a beacon for the style of React code I want to write.
4. useEffect - Another from the official (beta) React docs, this does a wonderful job of walking through how useState and useEffect hooks should and can be used. It’s one of the gnarliest and useful bits of a React application, so it might take repeat read-throughs!

Bonus

• Why React Re-Renders - In general, I'm of the opinion that you rarely need to worry about React re-renders in your day-to-day, but it was useful to learn many many months into my React learning journey.
• The many definitions of Server-Side Rendering - React is a framework, but Next.js is also a framework! A quick little dive into SSR.
• The case for frameworks - I love performance on the web and hold an appreciation for folks pushing forward there, but I tend to see a lot of value in React - it's what helped me fall back in love with frontend development, and I think this article really encapsulates a lot of my feelings towards what will (and should) be an eternal debate.