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Ghameerah McCullers
Ghameerah McCullers

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Getting started with create-react-app for Beginners

Hello there, my name is Ghameerah McCullers & I'm Software Developer here to talk with you today about what it's like starting your first React application.

For starters, you should check out the official documentation on React's website (https://reactjs.org/docs/getting-started.html). This site has a really great guide on how getting started with React works.

Also, to get your feet wet, you should play around with the Tic Tac Toe tutorial providing by the official React website (https://reactjs.org/tutorial/tutorial.html). Building this mini-project should give you hands-on experience with the tool.

I would also suggest reading the Thinking in React blog post (https://reactjs.org/docs/thinking-in-react.html) in order to get more familiar with the concepts of React.

In order to play around with the tool, you'll need to create your first application. This can be accomplished by simply running this command in your single-application project directory:

npx create-react-app <cool-app-name>
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Notice, you can name your application WHATEVER you like, it's your prerogative. Just be mindful about your naming, you'll want your project name to be related to the purpose of your app.

As a good developer, we want to make sure we have the most up-to-date tools. Set up your development environment so that you can use the latest JavaScript features and optimize your application. You'll need to have Node >= 10.16 and npm >= 5.6 on your machine. NPM & Nodejs (Node) can be downloaded on your machine using the following website for reference: https://www.npmjs.com/get-npm.

Once you have created your project, move into the folder to see the application run on your local machine. In your terminal type the following:

cd <cool-app-name>
npm start
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I hope the article was helpful for React beginners, if you have any questions reach out to me via LinkedIn or Twitter. Happy Coding!

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