I’m personally becoming frustrated by the “we draw the line at React hooks” idea - which I feel like I’m seeing repeated. Like that’s the point at which learning new concepts crosses over from useful exercise to useless extravagance.
So let me say something which is true, but totally against the spirit of this article: there should be 10x as many (!) tutorials about how to implement everything in React using hooks.
My reasoning is pretty simple. For a new learner, unless you have a compelling counter example needing classes, you should use hooks. That’s what you should start off learning and that should be your go-to.
But if you click away from this comment, right now, go to Google, and search for tutorials, despite this “best practice” advice, you’ll see an unholy mess of tutorials citing classes, with a few using hooks as though it’s some kind of new fangled, “out there” tech. I’m talking in the top 10 search results on Google’s front page. In 2020, long after the React team has introduced and explained them.
Look, it’s simple. Aside from their other advantages, hooks make it easier to learn React, with less boilerplate. As a result, it would be better if beginner tutorials were updated to use them. Most have not been.
But I see this complaint regularly, where hooks are trotted out as some kind of example of silly React maximalism. If you learned React then hooks are only going to take up like 2% of the total time budget you’ve already dedicated to learning the framework. It’s not hard, and it’s nothing like learning, say, Haskell. Using hooks to make cheap shots against overcomplicated JS frameworks is unfair, when they’re not overcomplicated and have a perfectly valid reason to exist.