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Ask HN: Best (physical) book to learn React?

by zapstar on 1/21/22, 9:34 PM with 23 comments

I’d love to read through a book on React, but I’m surprised at the poor reviews on Amazon. Perhaps I’m looking in the wrong place. Who can point me to a good one (that maybe isn’t sold from Amazon)?

Alternatively, why should I not be considering React? Is everybody using something else these days? Looking to build a front-end to interact with some REST APIs.

  • by LAC-Tech on 1/21/22, 9:42 PM

    Alternatively, why should I not be considering React? Is everybody using something else these days? Looking to build a front-end to interact with some REST APIs.

    React is a decent choice for that. Go ahead and learn it.

    If you want to do frontend in 99% of shops - React by itself is not enough. People will tell you it's "just a library" - and that's technically true.

    But in the wild you'll be dealing with something I call "Enterprise React". A bloated monstrosity of a web project created with create-react-app (Which is a nightmare of needless complexity under a thin and very slow veneer of convenience). Your react and general coding skills will be secondary to your skills as a sort of npm sysadmin, because best practices are to download a library for every whim anyone ever has.

    That is unless you never update it your packages while you are there. Which honestly - I've recently learned - is the smarter career play.

    So sure, learn react, make your SPA. But be careful of getting too deep into it, because that way lies madness.

  • by throwawayjs9021 on 1/22/22, 3:53 AM

    Maybe you are looking for "React: Up & Running: Building Web Applications" 2nd Edition? Physical book published by O'reilly on December 2021. Author is Stoyan Stefanov, a facebook engineer (ex fb I think?). Has good reviews. It's also only 230 pages. https://www.amazon.com/React-Running-Building-Web-Applicatio...

    Hooks (functions?) are the way forward for React. Classes were the old way. But this book has both. Author's rationale is "A controversial decision was the inclusion of class components in addition to function components. Function components are likely the way forward; however, the reader is likely to encounter existing code and tutorials that talk only about class components. Knowing both syntaxes doubles the chances of reading and understanding code in the wild". Seems reasonable.

    Also definitely take a look at the React Docs Beta at https://beta.reactjs.org/

    They seem to be a substantial improvement over the previous docs. All explanations are written using Hooks rather than classes.

    I love this 10 min intro video to React Docs Beta by Rachel Nabors from React Conf 2021. Has subtitles. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mneDaMYOKP8

    Some comments have said React might be a way to hell, so if you wanna improve your JavaScript or CSS, there are 2 well-regarded paid courses:

    Just JavaScript by Dan Abramov. He's a member of the React team, and a co-author of Redux and Create React App. https://justjavascript.com/

    CSS course by Josh Comeau. https://css-for-js.dev/

    Both are paid courses.

  • by ceasesurthinko on 1/22/22, 12:05 AM

    Road to React, is a decent book (and the only one I read), but honestly I would recommend watching a few tutorials instead.

    If you worried about outdatedness just try to get a book made after the introduction of React Hooks which should be end of 2018/early 2019. I think the physical Road to React on Amazon isn't updated, don't buy that lol, best to buy the ebook file from that dudes website and read it off of a kindle or something.

  • by hoofhearted on 1/21/22, 10:16 PM

    ReactJS is certainly worth learning. I personally use the Clone Wars on GitHub as my instruction manual when I'm not sure how to accomplish something with React and I want to see how it could be built in the real world.

  • by s0rr0wskill on 1/22/22, 12:18 AM

    Physical is probably not that good for learning a framework

  • by ivars on 1/22/22, 5:13 AM

    I like "Learning React" 2nd Edition (2020) by Ranks and Porcello. Emphasis is on functional programming and hooks.

  • by zapstar on 1/21/22, 9:40 PM

    Bonus points: I'd like to be reading about a recent version of React, not a book that was published in 2018.

  • by quickthrower2 on 1/21/22, 10:58 PM

    Why restrict yourself to physical. There is a big world of online courses on React and many are free.

  • by ja27 on 1/22/22, 12:04 AM

    freeCodeCamp has a new course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/free-react-course-2022/

    (All the books I learned from are out of date)