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What is your approach to learning a new Javascript framework?

Daniel Voicu on August 18, 2018

I've started learning Vue.js as I need it for some projects at my job. Yet I feel that my approach - deep diving into it and trying to figure things out as I go - might not be the best way to do it. What are your opinions on this? How do you learn a new framework?

Thanks and I'm really curious to see your take on this.

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Andrei Gatej

I usually watch a video just to get an overview of that framework and then I try to build a small application using the online documentation or any online resource.

I'm not even an expert, but this has always worked for me.

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Shubham Sinha • Edited

If you know one you don't need any paid course. Most of the Js frameworks have two core concepts, Components and Props. The only thing that differs is syntax and store (state) management. That too you can infer easily. If you are coming from jQuery land things may seem difficult but there's a way you can get around that. Here's how I transitioned myself to be React developer.

  1. Went through Js (ES6) docs on M.D.N and Airbnb's style guide.
  2. Opened my best work on jQuery and turned it into pure vanilla Javascript implementation.
  3. Applied for jobs. Why? Because first they do is to forward you assignment. Bare minimum knowledge they expect from a developer.
  4. Solve that god damn assignment.
  5. Start a small side project. Use dummy APIs to build an ecommerce app.
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rhymes

Back in the day (which is November 2017 not 1938 :D) I went through this video tutorial on udemy: udemy.com/vuejs-2-the-complete-guide/ (I got it for 10€ because of some discount). He keeps the course updated and it was my first foray both in Vue and SPAs so it helped a lot.

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Daniel Voicu

This is pretty cool, I didn't know he had a course for Vue. He also had one for Angular that was very popular if I remember well.

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Max Cannon

This is a great course - you can refer back to it once you buy it...

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John Hotterbeekx

I find that deep diving into these frameworks gets me overwhelmed pretty quickly. A method I'm liking is from the 10 steps learning program from the soft skills book from John Somnez. You can find some more information on medium.com/the-polymath-project/ho...

It all comes down to get a big picture overview, decide what you want to reach, find the right materials and start a play / read loop. Finally once you reached what you set for yourself, try and teach it to someone else.

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Daniel Voicu

Nice idea! I've read the Medium post and I'll be looking into buying that book too. I realized that I watched some of John Somnez videos on Youtube when I was just starting out, didn't know he wrote a book.

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Bobby

I just went through this course and recommend it to anyone needing to learn vue.js. I tried to brute Force learn it as my first SPA project and it wasn't working. This course gave me everything I needed after spending 4 day's going through it.

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Daniel Voicu

What course? The one that @rhymes mentioned or another one?

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Avalander

I can relate to all your points 😁

I've been meaning to learn ClojureScript (not really a framework, but still) for a while, but it's so different from creating a regular web project that I always feel discouraged and give up. I wish they would make a webpack loader that I can just add to my project.

I also dislike when getting started guides tell you to install and run create-x-app and it generates a hundred files and folders, I like to understand what's going on.

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Sergiu Mureşan

Salutări!

My usual approach is:
Watch some introductory tutorials to learn the basics of the basics -> Dive into the project -> Read very carefully the documentation for almost everything that is being used or you are gonna use.

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Ben • Edited

My approach is to build a hello world application first.

Then, I would try different features that other framework would have.

For JavaScript Framework similar to VueJs

  • Angular
  • React
  • Ember
  • ExtJs

Common Features

  • Two-way binding
  • State Routing
  • Ajax
  • Error Handling
  • Template Rendering
  • Validation

If I thinks the framework is very awesome, I would try to study in detail.

For example

  • Life Cycle
  • Architecture
  • Third Party Library Integration
  • Back-end Integration
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István Lantos
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Theofanis Despoudis

Just learn on the job. That's how I learned Angular, React and others.

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Avalander

I look at some app ideas list an implement a bunch of them in the framework of choice.

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Daniel Voicu

Nice point! I'll give it a try.