
Ask HN: When will the React trend fade away? - damaru
I&#x27;m surely not an expert coder, but I&#x27;ve work with the web since setting up BBS in the 90s. I&#x27;ve dabbled in react a few time only to find myself annoyed by it&#x27;s complexity. I have a deep feeling that this type of framework is only a trend. It is changing the way we think about the web, and will surely inspire better way to code the web, but I feel the fad greatly surpass the usefulness of this new paradigm. I wonder how HN feels about it?
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acemarke
I think you're very wrong on a couple levels.

First, React has spread the concept of composable component-based UI
development. Angular has adopted many of the ideas, Ember has adopted many of
the ideas, and there's a whole bunch of other libraries that have been
inspired by ideas that React has helped popularize.

Second, React's popularity is continuing to grow. I'm pretty biased, but I
don't see React as a "fad", and I definitely don't see it going away any time
soon.

Third, the point of React itself is to _reduce_ complexity so that you can
look at components in isolation and understand how they behave. Yes, yes,
"Javascript Fatigue", tooling, libraries, etc, etc. Most of that is not React-
specific, but rather a factor of trying to build complex web applications that
live in a browser.

If you have any specific concerns or complaints about learning or using React,
I'd be happy to answer questions. Just for kicks, I'll toss out my standard
advice for learning React:

The article "A Study Plan to Cure Javascript Fatigue" (
[https://medium.freecodecamp.com/a-study-plan-to-cure-
javascr...](https://medium.freecodecamp.com/a-study-plan-to-cure-javascript-
fatigue-8ad3a54f2eb1) ) is a great place to start. It gives an excellent
series of steps for tackling modern Javascript concepts one piece at a time:
Javascript, React, ES6, and state management.

On that note, definitely don't over-complicate the learning process by trying
to learn many different things at once. Some people will say you should use a
"boilerplate" to learn React, and they're wrong - boilerplate projects almost
always come with too many pieces configured, and are confusing for beginners.

Instead, the best advice is to focus on learning React itself first. Once you
have a good understanding of how React works, you will better appreciate why a
state management library like Redux can be useful, and you can learn about
other tools later.

You should start out by reading through the official React docs and tutorial
at [https://facebook.github.io/react/](https://facebook.github.io/react/), and
I'd encourage you to use the official Create-React-App tool (
[https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react-
app](https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react-app) ) for setting up
projects. It creates a project with a solid build setup, with no configuration
needed on your part. There's an excellent post called "Simple React
Development in 2017" ( [https://hackernoon.com/simple-react-development-
in-2017-113b...](https://hackernoon.com/simple-react-development-
in-2017-113bd563691f) ) that gives some more specific instructions on the
actual steps to follow.

Past that, I keep a big list of links to high-quality tutorials and articles
on React, Redux, and related topics, at [https://github.com/markerikson/react-
redux-links](https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links) . Specifically
intended to be a great starting point for anyone trying to learn the
ecosystem, as well as a solid source of good info on more advanced topics. It
includes links for learning core Javascript (ES5), modern Javascript (ES6+),
React, and much more. I also published an "Intro to React (and Redux)"
presentation at [http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/02/presentation-
react-...](http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/02/presentation-react-redux-
intro/) , which is a good overview of the basic concepts for both React and
Redux.

Finally, the Reactiflux chat channels on Discord are a great place to hang
out, ask questions, and learn. The invite link is at
[https://www.reactiflux.com](https://www.reactiflux.com) .

