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0 pointszeemonkee310y ago0 comments

I've recently been looking at job boards, and "React" turns up a lot. As does Angular, but not as much as a year or two ago.

So it's not so much about whether a given tech works for your project or not (being honest, server-side rendering + dash of jQuery is probably more than adequate for a lot of sites going full-on React+Redux right now) but fear of your skills becoming obsolete. Given the shit-show hiring is right now with its resume filtering and whiteboard hazing (witness every other week on HN) that's not an unfounded fear. So in order to have something on our resume that we used React in our last job, we use React for our current project...and so contribute to the problem.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

madeofpalk10y ago· 3 in thread

If you see a lot of jobs requiring React, or are fear becoming obsolete, then just learn React. It's very very simple - the API is like 5 functions, and the documentation takes like 20 minutes to read from start-to-end.

Don't learn anything else - just learn plain vanilla-React. The site has a onepager.html 'blueprint' to work from.

If people are getting anxious about this, its more than likely self-inflicted from trying to learn 30 things at once that you don't need.

zeemonkee3OP10y ago

It's not just React, there's a huge ecosystem developing around it that is undergoing constant churn - see react-router or babel for example. And then with Redux you have a whole subsystem around that - redux-form and sagas and react-redux-router (or is it react-router-redux?). Then we have the GraphQL/Relay train leaving the station. Oh, and I've not even touched testing tools yet, or webpack (a whole other ecosystem on its own). Or CSS modules or...

But let's say I did learn all that (in fact, I did recently for a personal side project). It doesn't matter a bit for applying for a job. Why? Because I don't have real work experience using these things. So in order to have that, I have to somehow leverage React into my current job so it can go into my resume.

nfriedly10y ago

> It doesn't matter a bit for applying for a job.

Sure it does! When I interview people, I tend to give a fair amount of weight in their side projects, because it's something they were actually interested in.

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madeofpalk10y ago

But you don't need to learn all of that! That's what I mean when I say self inflicted. If you feel the need to learn all this BS, no wonder you're feeling fatigued.

We just built and released a Very Big Project using React, Redux, and React-Router. Smooth sailing. Zero JS-Churn. No one had any issues being overwhelmed. We never went crazy and threw in every hot new library we heard about on Twitter.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

madeofpalk10y ago· 3 in thread

Don't learn anything else - just learn plain vanilla-React. The site has a onepager.html 'blueprint' to work from.

If people are getting anxious about this, its more than likely self-inflicted from trying to learn 30 things at once that you don't need.

zeemonkee3OP10y ago

nfriedly10y ago

> It doesn't matter a bit for applying for a job.

Sure it does! When I interview people, I tend to give a fair amount of weight in their side projects, because it's something they were actually interested in.

1 more reply

madeofpalk10y ago

But you don't need to learn all of that! That's what I mean when I say self inflicted. If you feel the need to learn all this BS, no wonder you're feeling fatigued.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse