Why Should I Learn React?

In this video, I want to answer a single question, which is why should I learn, react? We all have a limited amount of time to learn new skills, and it seems like new tools and libraries are popping up all the time. So before we invest a ton of time into learning something like React, it's important to know that the skills we're going to get are actually useful and valuable. So in this video, we're going to take just a couple of minutes to talk about two reasons why you should learn, react. The first reason has to do with the React Library itself. And the second reason has to do with the React community. I'm excited to get to it. So let's jump right in to reason number one. The number one reason you should learn react has to do with the React library itself. First up, React has a small learning curve. That means we can get up and running with the fundamentals of react in the first few sections of the class. And that's a good thing because we want to start to get productive with React so we can start building meaningful applications. What we don't want to do is spend a ton of time relearning how to do basic things in some new framework, and that's not what React is. React builds off of what you already know about JavaScript and adds a few small enhancements in things like JSX, which we'll cover later that make it even easier to build applications. Now, at the core of React is this idea of a component, so you have components on your page for things like a login form or the application header. You put multiple components together and you end up with a complete application. The component based architecture forces you to take complex applications and break them up into small little contained pieces. These small little pieces are way easier to build, maintain, test and debug, and once you start working with components, you're going to be surprised that you ever did things another way Last up react is really fast. It renders and rerenders your application quickly keeping it up to date with the latest changes in your application data. The rendering algorithms that react use, keep it fast and snappy and we'll learn all about those as we move through the class. Last up. Remember when you're learning react, you're not just learning something that can be used to build web applications with React. You can build mobile applications, desktop apps, virtual reality apps and more. So in summary, we can get up and running with React quickly. We can write complex applications without complex code, and React is fast. Allowing us to build applications for a wide range of platforms. All right. Let's jump into reason number two. The second reason you should learn react is because the React community is top notch. When you learn, react. You're joining an active community of developers, companies, jobs and open source projects. With a strong community, there's no need to reinvent the wheel as you're building out your application. If there's something you want to do in your React application, there's likely already a tool or library that's going to help you get that done. Need a calendar picker? Need users to be able to drag and drop data in your application regardless of what you need to do. There's probably a React library that can help you get that done that's going to allow you to spend more time focusing on what makes your application unique and less time on things that aren't specific to your app. Now, with a strong community also comes great resources. There are thousands of tutorials, videos and blog posts, including this class, that'll show you how to do everything you'd want to do with React Community Resources like Stack Overflow also become infinitely more valuable in an active community where questions actually get answers. Now, I mentioned earlier in the promo video that large companies like Facebook, Uber, Comcast, Netflix and others are already using React in production. And I don't just say that to throw out names of trendy companies, I think you might recognize. I say that because it shows real buy in from real companies. That means jobs and opportunities for you. A React developer. New companies are switching to react all the time, which means your skills are only getting more valuable now. Every year, Stack Overflow runs their annual developer survey for 2019. Would you like to guess what was the most popular and loved framework React Angular or Vue? It was React. A good tool with a bad community equals a poor developer experience. A good tool with a good community gets us. Those numbers we were seeing in the Stack Overflow survey, a popular tool that is loved by its developers. So hopefully at this point you agree with me that React is something worth learning. We're going to jump right into the class in the next section, so let's get to it.