React discussion thread

[charlieharper]

I've been learning React JS over the last few weeks. Still need to get into Redux for more complex state handling.

I think I'm past the main learning curve and i'm having so much fun so far. Currently writing an API in Nodejs (Express) to serve data to the frontend.

Anyone else learning React or keen to do so?

I'm deploying projects on Netlify (it's free) and then running the API's on a $5 vps.

Would be great to see what you guys are building.

Cheers

 

[John_Phoenix]

Good man! What was the hardest part of picking up react (for you) for me it was the compilation step and being sticking "html" directly in js. After that, slamming out data became easy. Events and the app shell concept with redux is fun.

As much as I like react, I do prefer separation of code (html / css / js) to sticking them in a file that needs to go through react, babel and webpack...

What was your frontend dev experience before react?

 

[charlieharper]

Good man! What was the hardest part of picking up react (for you) for me it was the compilation step and being sticking "html" directly in js. After that, slamming out data became easy. Events and the app shell concept with redux is fun.

As much as I like react, I do prefer separation of code (html / css / js) to sticking them in a file that needs to go through react, babel and webpack...

What was your frontend dev experience before react?

I suppose the hardest part was getting the hang of writing html in js and then to make sense of states and props. That was kinda weird in the beginning but totally makes sense now.

Before this I wrote all my sites using Python/Django and just regular vanilla js/jquery.

Then I learnt about (modern) static sites and switched my blog over to Jekyll from hosting Ghost on my VPS.

I'm a big fan of Ghost however, they have an amazing editor, but wasn't a fan of hosting it - my server crashed/cpu maxed out when one of my articles went Viral on Hackenews a few months ago.
They do however have a new headless CMS, which I will try with a Gatsby Site (which is based on React) in the near future. Apparently on Netlify it connects to your Ghost api and rebuilds everytime you publish a new blog post, ensuring your blog is being served Static, so I'm super keen to try that.