Interesting perspective: I think the precise opposite is true. Redux, react-router, design patterns are gluing third party components together. The number of p

Interesting perspective: I think the precise opposite is true. Redux, react-router, design patterns are gluing third party components together. The number of people who blindly run create-react-app without a hint of real understanding of what boilerplate it installs, or how many dependencies it pulls in, what those components do, is overwhelming. You're right: the prevailing opinion is that you can just fake it; drop in redux, follow a nice straightforward guide on creating some actions and reducers step by step without having to make any real architectural decisions about application state or even fully understand the mechanics of dispatch lifecycle. (Note: not a criticism of Redux, Redux is fine, rather a criticism of any ecosystem where hordes of relative beginners run automated boilerplate generators and slap together convention-over-configuration apps run on the most populist trending paradigm with no attempt to understand the—possibly very good—reasons these patterns became fashionable) tptacek is pointing out that one can focus on learning your individual components (general definition of the word, not React.Component) properly, rather than learning the "way" to put all the recommended bits together at a high level and not understand each deeply. e.g. learn React, rather than trying to learn React+Redux+router; it will give you a much more professional understanding of the boundaries between these dependencies too. > If you do not consistently produce work of professional quality you just might not be a professional. I'm sorry but this sentence comes across a little conceited. If you are unable to grok the composition of your own product how can you even begin to ascertain its quality?