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I've recently been looking at job boards, and "React" turns up a lot. As does Angular, but not as much as a year or two ago. So it's not so much about whether

I've recently been looking at job boards, and "React" turns up a lot. As does Angular, but not as much as a year or two ago. So it's not so much about whether a given tech works for your project or not (being honest, server-side rendering + dash of jQuery is probably more than adequate for a lot of sites going full-on React+Redux right now) but fear of your skills becoming obsolete. Given the shit-show hiring is right now with its resume filtering and whiteboard hazing (witness every other week on HN) that's not an unfounded fear. So in order to have something on our resume that we used React in our last job, we use React for our current project...and so contribute to the problem.

madeofpalk 11y ago
If you see a lot of jobs requiring React, or are fear becoming obsolete, then just learn React. It's very very simple - the API is like 5 functions, and the documentation takes like 20 minutes to read from start-to-end. Don't learn anything else - just learn plain vanilla-React. The site has a onepager.html 'blueprint' to work from. If people are getting anxious about this, its more than likely self-inflicted from trying to learn 30 things at once that you don't need.
- zeemonkee3 11y ago
  It's not just React, there's a huge ecosystem developing around it that is undergoing constant churn - see react-router or babel for example. And then with Redux you have a whole subsystem around that - redux-form and sagas and react-redux-router (or is it react-router-redux?). Then we have the GraphQL/Relay train leaving the station. Oh, and I've not even touched testing tools yet, or webpack (a whole other ecosystem on its own). Or CSS modules or... But let's say I did learn all that (in fact, I did recently for a personal side project). It doesn't matter a bit for applying for a job. Why? Because I don't have real work experience using these things. So in order to have that, I have to somehow leverage React into my current job so it can go into my resume.
  - nfriedly 11y ago
    > It doesn't matter a bit for applying for a job. Sure it does! When I interview people, I tend to give a fair amount of weight in their side projects, because it's something they were actually interested in.
    - zeemonkee3 11y ago
      Maybe you do - and if so, kudos. But that's not standard industry practice. Nobody looks at your Github - except maybe at the final stages of the process. In the meantime you have to get through a lot of filters.
      - nfriedly 11y ago
        Well, maybe my viewpoint isn't the most common. But I can at least say that it does matter to some companies / interviewers. My resume has a link to my github and I specifically call out 3 or 4 projects. If you want your side projects to count in an interview, that's probably a good place to start - if nothing else, you can at least use them for buzzword bingo to get past HR ;)
        zeemonkee3 11y ago
        I do the same, but it's never made much of a difference, at least until later in the game.
  - madeofpalk 11y ago
    But you don't need to learn all of that! That's what I mean when I say self inflicted. If you feel the need to learn all this BS, no wonder you're feeling fatigued. We just built and released a Very Big Project using React, Redux, and React-Router. Smooth sailing. Zero JS-Churn. No one had any issues being overwhelmed. We never went crazy and threw in every hot new library we heard about on Twitter.
    - zeemonkee3 11y ago

madeofpalk 11y ago

If you see a lot of jobs requiring React, or are fear becoming obsolete, then just learn React. It's very very simple - the API is like 5 functions, and the documentation takes like 20 minutes to read from start-to-end. Don't learn anything else - just learn plain vanilla-React. The site has a onepager.html 'blueprint' to work from. If people are getting anxious about this, its more than likely self-inflicted from trying to learn 30 things at once that you don't need.

zeemonkee3 11y ago
It's not just React, there's a huge ecosystem developing around it that is undergoing constant churn - see react-router or babel for example. And then with Redux you have a whole subsystem around that - redux-form and sagas and react-redux-router (or is it react-router-redux?). Then we have the GraphQL/Relay train leaving the station. Oh, and I've not even touched testing tools yet, or webpack (a whole other ecosystem on its own). Or CSS modules or... But let's say I did learn all that (in fact, I did recently for a personal side project). It doesn't matter a bit for applying for a job. Why? Because I don't have real work experience using these things. So in order to have that, I have to somehow leverage React into my current job so it can go into my resume.
- nfriedly 11y ago
  > It doesn't matter a bit for applying for a job. Sure it does! When I interview people, I tend to give a fair amount of weight in their side projects, because it's something they were actually interested in.
  - zeemonkee3 11y ago
    Maybe you do - and if so, kudos. But that's not standard industry practice. Nobody looks at your Github - except maybe at the final stages of the process. In the meantime you have to get through a lot of filters.
    - nfriedly 11y ago
      Well, maybe my viewpoint isn't the most common. But I can at least say that it does matter to some companies / interviewers. My resume has a link to my github and I specifically call out 3 or 4 projects. If you want your side projects to count in an interview, that's probably a good place to start - if nothing else, you can at least use them for buzzword bingo to get past HR ;)
      - zeemonkee3 11y ago
        I do the same, but it's never made much of a difference, at least until later in the game.
- madeofpalk 11y ago
  But you don't need to learn all of that! That's what I mean when I say self inflicted. If you feel the need to learn all this BS, no wonder you're feeling fatigued. We just built and released a Very Big Project using React, Redux, and React-Router. Smooth sailing. Zero JS-Churn. No one had any issues being overwhelmed. We never went crazy and threw in every hot new library we heard about on Twitter.
  - zeemonkee3 11y ago