ReactBook - The React.js book I wish I had (and it’s free!)
Hi everyone,
I remember when I started learning React, back in 2015/16, it was really really hard to understand most of the concepts because of the lack of proper documentation/tutorials. Yeah react docs were there but they were more of a "reference" than something someone new to React would need.
Now, we have immense quantity of tutorials, great react docs, AIs to help us with teaching, but I still think - it’s much easier to learn how to use React than to understand why React behaves the way it does. Yeah, not everyone might be interested in learning this but it's for people who want to learn more deeply about React.
For example, even having around a decade of experience with react, I still end up in situations wheere I have no idea why did this component render 2 times, or why did the useeffect run multiple times? Why did some state disappear? A lot of times I'd look for an answer and end up asking an AI to find those (nothing wrong with it though!)
And I really hated that gap between "yeah, I can build this in React" and actually understanding what React was doing under-the-hood?! That's pretty much why I thought about writing something like ReactBook.
It actually starts with the browser itself, and then slowly builds from there into rendering, component identity, state, effects, and eventually how all of this behaves in a production app. I didn't want random tips or another bunch of "just do this" rules.
Basically, I wanted to write the React explanation I wish I had when I was learning all this. I've completed the first volume, and all of it is free to read online.
And now with AI making it ridiculously easy to generate code, I feel understanding the code you're running has become even more important.