Learning front-end development is often overwhelming for beginners. Many of them want to learn React, but this question often keeps them from tackle the library.
While you should be comfortable with some basic JS concepts, you don't necessarily need to be a JavaScript expert to learn React (or any other UI library). Actually, you can learn React as you continue learning JavaScript.
You should have a good understanding of the fundamentals of JavaScript:
- Variables and data types
- Conditionals (in particular the ternary operator)
- Loops
- Functions
- Objects and arrays (note: in JavaScript, arrays are a type of object)
These syntatic aspects of the language are particularly important:
You should also be aware of these more advance topics:
It's also important to remember that you also need some knowledge of HTML and CSS. Again, you don't have to be an expert, but the more you know, the better.
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Top comments (4)
Learning about DOM manipulation is also necessary before learning react, you should build a medium sized web app with pure javascript (no frameworks) so you have the chance to face the problems that react solves, and that way you can appreciate react and learn it easier because you know the purpose of using it
Sadly, this rarely seems to happen
Yeah people seem to jump into frameworks sooner than they should, and when that happens it makes it harder for them to understand why to use a framework and how it works
Hi Nico, Thanks for a great article. I have long maintained that web/frontend developers should first gain a good understanding of the foundational technologies, HTML, CSS and JS, before venturing into mature frameworks like React, Vue and especially Angular.
I have interviewed several bootcamp graduates who have a good understanding of what they were taught on the course but find developing production code a far bigger challenge because of their shallow understanding of web standards.
Besides, as popular are React has been, and probably will be for the near future, there are up and coming contenders for the crown such as Svelte, Solid and Alpine, to name a few.
However, getting (and maintaing) a firm foundation in the web standards will last a developer much longer and help them migrate between frameworks.
I strongly encourage new web developers to trawl MDN and become familiar with the technologies at the heart of our industry.
Regards, Tracy