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Learn React for free

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Re: Learn React for free

#31

Post by jsgo »

acemarke wrote: post #13
benbristow wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned most of it myself but bought a Udemy course for Black Friday. I find the docs to be quite confusing to be honest. I know it's not React but Redux's docs aren't great either. Concepts quite hard to understand at first.

Hi, I'm a Redux maintainer. FWIW, a lot of people tell us Redux's docs are "great", but we've also had people tell us they aren't helpful. Kinda hard to figure out how to make improvements based on that kind of conflicting feedback :) We are actually looking at revamping the Redux docs in the near future [0]. If you've got any specific concerns or suggestions on how we can improve things, please let me know directly,…

not saying you're taking offense to the critique, but I wouldn't. While I don't use Redux nor have experience with the docs for it, there have been some concepts that I didn't grasp from reading the docs for a topic where others had a better understanding of it coming out where after someone broke it down in a blog, it allowed me to understand it as well (at which point the docs were beneficial as a resource to come back to later). Different mediums will probably be better suited for getting more nuanced than the docs can, generally.

So I can totally see where conflicting feedback could appear and why you shouldn't take the "negative" feedback as a slight against the work on the docs (but fielding concerns/questions/suggestions as you are is completely a great thing).

From the outside looking in, if I were looking at Redux and I heard from a few "man, the docs are a bit hard to grasp" and others "I love the docs. They allowed me to get up and running" I wouldn't be scared off; it'd seem to be pretty par for the course.

Re: Learn React for free

#32

Post by acemarke »

jsgo wrote: post #31
acemarke wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I'm a Redux maintainer. FWIW, a lot of people tell us Redux's docs are "great", but we've also had people tell us they aren't helpful. Kinda hard to figure out how to make improvements based on that kind of conflicting feedback :) We are actually looking at revamping the Redux docs in the near future [0]. If you've got any specific concerns or suggestions on how we can improve things, please let me know directly,…

not saying you're taking offense to the critique, but I wouldn't. While I don't use Redux nor have experience with the docs for it, there have been some concepts that I didn't grasp from reading the docs for a topic where others had a better understanding of it coming out where after someone broke it down in a blog, it allowed me to understand it as well (at which point the docs were beneficial as a resource to come…

Right, not taking offense - just saying that it's hard to come up with actionable ways to improve things when most people say they're good, and a few people say they're not helpful, and neither group really gives much in the way of specifics :)

Re: Learn React for free

#33

Post by nohat »

thrower123 wrote: post #22
danellis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be a culture of collecting Udemy courses among fledgeling web developers.

Young web developers certainly seem to love video courses for some reason. Maybe I'm just old and crotchety, (well, one of those is certainly true), but I would much rather get my fix textually and go along at my own pace. Flipping pages or scrolling is still superior to trying to scrub through a video timeline.

I agree most of the time, but sometimes watching someone actually do something lets you observe the little things that the teacher would take for granted or forget to mention in a written format.

Re: Learn React for free

#34

Post by munchbunny »

ggregoire wrote: post #8

Why would you even pay to learn React? The official doc is free and takes only few hours of reading.

For programming veterans who have at least some frontend experience and just want to pick up React (i.e. me) the React docs and scattered tutorials/stack overflow sites was sufficient. But I wouldn't remotely recommend this path for someone relatively new to programming.

Re: Learn React for free

#35

Post by matthewmacleod »

azangru wrote: post #24

Have you listened to the "Why React" video? He says there, repeatedly, that, quote, "For now, it's enough to know that the virtual DOM helps make React work a lot faster than vanilla JavaScript". How can anyone make such a statement and expect to remain a credible source of information? I mean, even if you are targeting complete novices, how?!

Because it's kind of right, in the way that it's not technically accurate, but a bit of an approximation that's reasonable for a beginner-level introduction.

Re: Learn React for free

#36

Post by munchbunny »

acemarke wrote: post #13
benbristow wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned most of it myself but bought a Udemy course for Black Friday. I find the docs to be quite confusing to be honest. I know it's not React but Redux's docs aren't great either. Concepts quite hard to understand at first.

Hi, I'm a Redux maintainer. FWIW, a lot of people tell us Redux's docs are "great", but we've also had people tell us they aren't helpful. Kinda hard to figure out how to make improvements based on that kind of conflicting feedback :) We are actually looking at revamping the Redux docs in the near future [0]. If you've got any specific concerns or suggestions on how we can improve things, please let me know directly,…

Maybe I can help on this one. I'm midway through learning Redux - enough to have stuff working, but not enough to write complex UI code with it.

The problem for me is that Redux uses a set of higher order constructs, which requires a set of functional abstractions that are pretty unique to Redux and Redux-likes. There isn't remotely enough documentation to explain why the boilerplate is put where it is or named the way it is, so I have working code, but no real understanding of why the boilerplate is this way vs. any other way.

So what happens in the docs is that I follow the tutorial along, and it's great about setting up the problems to show why Redux is useful, but then it goes "ok so to solve the problem you use this magical incantation in Redux." Yes, I can adapt the magical incantation, but that doesn't really help me grok who owns which callback that makes which modifications or transformations to be consumed by which objects.

Re: Learn React for free

#37

Post by acemarke »

munchbunny wrote: post #36
acemarke wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I'm a Redux maintainer. FWIW, a lot of people tell us Redux's docs are "great", but we've also had people tell us they aren't helpful. Kinda hard to figure out how to make improvements based on that kind of conflicting feedback :) We are actually looking at revamping the Redux docs in the near future [0]. If you've got any specific concerns or suggestions on how we can improve things, please let me know directly,…

Maybe I can help on this one. I'm midway through learning Redux - enough to have stuff working, but not enough to write complex UI code with it. The problem for me is that Redux uses a set of higher order constructs, which requires a set of functional abstractions that are pretty unique to Redux and Redux-likes. There isn't remotely enough documentation to explain why the boilerplate is put where it is or named the w…

Can you point to some specific "boilerplate" examples you're having trouble with, and possibly also docs pages showing those items?

Re: Learn React for free

#38

Post by doanguyen »

ggregoire wrote: post #8

Why would you even pay to learn React? The official doc is free and takes only few hours of reading.

I would say we are all human. Some are lazy, some want shortcuts, some have difficulty in reading, all sort of things, that's why there are a lot of non-free React (framework X/ Library Y...) courses

Re: Learn React for free

#39

Post by azangru »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #35
azangru wrote: post #24

Have you listened to the "Why React" video? He says there, repeatedly, that, quote, "For now, it's enough to know that the virtual DOM helps make React work a lot faster than vanilla JavaScript". How can anyone make such a statement and expect to remain a credible source of information? I mean, even if you are targeting complete novices, how?!

Because it's kind of right, in the way that it's not technically accurate, but a bit of an approximation that's reasonable for a beginner-level introduction.

But how, how? I wouldn't be able to bring myself to say something that I knew to be strictly inaccurate. Even if you are talking to beginners, don't you owe it to them to say only things that you believe to be true? There are lots of ways to put it differently so that it wouldn't be so outrageously inaccurate and so that, if you are a beginner, more senior developers don't laugh at you if you repeat those things.

Re: Learn React for free

#40

Post by ep103 »

narwally wrote: post #18
danellis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be a culture of collecting Udemy courses among fledgeling web developers.

Do people actually put that kind of stuff on resumes? I've done a good handful of MOOC courses (usually not all the way through to be fair), but I can't imagine actually paying for a certificate so I can put it on my resume. If I want to show that I know React I'd rather just build something with it, throw it on github, and list it as a side-project.

yes, yes they do.
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