Rather than posting random stuff that popped up this week like usual, I wanted to instead post a set of “classic” links instead. The theme this week is Learning React. Here are some of the links that helped me to learn different React concepts as I was first tackling it. Note that these are links that helped me learn the concepts behind different parts of the React ecosystem. Some are intro level, while some assume basic familiarity with the concepts they discuss.
The Motivation Behind React
Thinking In React - It’s strange, but I never expect the official docs for a project to be the best explanation of their purpose. Official documentation tends to lean towards the “how” rather than the “why”, and the motivations of the maintainers aren’t always the motivations of the community anyway. But this article from the React docs remains the best explanations of the problems that React is solving as well as the way that it solves them.
Pure UI - Even moreso than Thinking in React, this 2015 article nails the paradigm shift that React represented. The power of UI as a function of data has been the biggest change I’ve experienced in my career building UIs, and this article was like a message in the bottle from the future when it was first written 3 years ago.
Flux, MobX and Redux
A cartoon guide to Flux | Lin Clark - This was a nice early run through of the Flux concepts. Lin Clark is one of the best “front end explainers” out there, and she does a good job here.
The Fundamental Principles Behind MobX | Michael Weststrate - Like most of the other links here, this is a theory link, not a practical introduction.
Getting Started With Redux | Dan Abramov on Egghead.io - Like Thinking with React, this is a great introduction to a library that starts with the problems to be solved and shows how a new library solves that problem, rather than simply telling you what a tool does.
You Might Not Need Redux | Dan Abramov - Another helpful article for understanding what Redux is and isn’t solving for, helpful if you’re trying to decide whether to include it in a project.
React Patterns
Advanced React Component Patterns | Kent C Dobbs on Egghead.io - This is my one paid content link, but its so good that its worth sharing. This was a fantastic course that covers patterns like Higher Order Components, Render props and more. It discusses both the implementation concerns and motivation behind each.
Future Stuff
React’s New Context API | Kent C Dobbs - This is fairly recent, but Kent Dobbs gave a great explanation of React’s new context API
Sneak Peek: Beyond React 16 | React Blog - I posted this last week as well, but this is a great inspirational talk on where React is going next.