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Dane Stevens
Dane Stevens

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Simple Complexities in React

Hey friends! We are all at different stages in our programming journey and each of us have faced unique challenges along the way. Concepts that were initially complex and frustrating to learn now seem simple.

You can't go back in time and mentor yourself through those complexities, but you can mentor others that are not as far along in their journey.

Q: What was the most difficult concept for you to grasp or the biggest challenge you faced while learning React?

Q: What is the next concept you want to master or challenge you want to overcome?

Q: If you could give one piece of advice to your past self, what would it be?

BONUS Q: Knowing what you know now, how would you simplify or distill your most challenging concept in a way that would have been easier to understand?

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Dane Stevens

I'll start!

A1: My biggest challenge coming from a PHP background was not understanding the purpose of each of the build tools an how they all fit together.

A2: I want to better understand real-time interfaces.

A3: One piece of advice would be to start with create-react-app because it has all the build tools already under the hood.

Bonus A: Build tools are only necessary because modern Javascript, CSS pre-processors etc. are not understood by all browsers yet: Babel transforms modern versions of Javascript into versions that older browsers can understand. Webpack bundles your local and remote modules so that your compiled site has all dependencies included.