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Same goes for '8. Use JSX, ES6, Babel, Webpack, and NPM' - JSX aside, setting up this tool stack is totally unnecessary for a beginner getting started hacking o

Same goes for '8. Use JSX, ES6, Babel, Webpack, and NPM' - JSX aside, setting up this tool stack is totally unnecessary for a beginner getting started hacking on a Hello World app. While I agree with you in theory, in practice learning how to use Babel/JSX and probably es6 are pretty essential to react. All the tutorials are written using JSX which necessitates a transpiler. And a ton of the supporting libraries are now in es6. If you are going to use react you're really going to need to figure out the es6 tool chain.

davnicwil 11y ago
Agreed - I did say JSX aside :-) JSX is coupled so tightly with React, and such a large part of React's offering, that learning React without JSX is probably actually going to slow down learning for the opposite reasons. In general, ES6 is a prerequisite for developing anything in JS for any developer/project with a forward-looking mentality in 2016 - but I do have to disagree that knowing ES6 is essential for learning React. They're actually completely orthogonal at this point - it allows for cleaner code but doesn't buy you anything at all in terms of learning the React concepts. As for getting started on the Babel toolchain - again it's orthogonal to learning React. The in-browser JSX transpiler is available. You can start learning react in a single page of html with script tags, just pulling all the libraries off cdns. There's just no need to have a tool chain at all, it is not essential. I think it comes down to the definition of beginner. If you're taking a very experienced JS developer and starting them on a real world React project, by all means go in at the deep end - they'll likely know most of the toolchain anyway and they'll need it. If you're talking about just giving someone an intro to React and its concepts, you have to separate the core from the ecosystem. My point was that we should recognise the difference, this is a common problem where experienced users tell beginners to 'just use' things that take months to become accustomed to in a few throwaway sentences, because to them it is just that easy. To a real beginner it represents a massive ramp, and that's not what you want when just trying to get an intro to a specific library.

davnicwil 11y ago

Agreed - I did say JSX aside :-) JSX is coupled so tightly with React, and such a large part of React's offering, that learning React without JSX is probably actually going to slow down learning for the opposite reasons. In general, ES6 is a prerequisite for developing anything in JS for any developer/project with a forward-looking mentality in 2016 - but I do have to disagree that knowing ES6 is essential for learning React. They're actually completely orthogonal at this point - it allows for cleaner code but doesn't buy you anything at all in terms of learning the React concepts. As for getting started on the Babel toolchain - again it's orthogonal to learning React. The in-browser JSX transpiler is available. You can start learning react in a single page of html with script tags, just pulling all the libraries off cdns. There's just no need to have a tool chain at all, it is not essential. I think it comes down to the definition of beginner. If you're taking a very experienced JS developer and starting them on a real world React project, by all means go in at the deep end - they'll likely know most of the toolchain anyway and they'll need it. If you're talking about just giving someone an intro to React and its concepts, you have to separate the core from the ecosystem. My point was that we should recognise the difference, this is a common problem where experienced users tell beginners to 'just use' things that take months to become accustomed to in a few throwaway sentences, because to them it is just that easy. To a real beginner it represents a massive ramp, and that's not what you want when just trying to get an intro to a specific library.