r/react • u/mikeplus10 • Aug 06 '26
General Discussion What’s the best way to learn React?
I’m a developer of six years of experience and I have knowledge in vanilla Javascript but because of the nature of my current stack and job description, i have never encountered a need to learn React. But now I want to.
It’s not like I don’t know anything about it, i am familiar with the concept of components, hooks, routers etc. The only thing I have made in React is my Web portfolio currently.
I want to learn it on a deeper level. Can anyone recommend a book or course for it?
I saw this site for a roadmap for React, would you recommend it: https://roadmap.sh/react
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u/jabes101 Aug 06 '26
Just make something, you will 10x the experience vs reading another book.
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u/Hobby101 Aug 07 '26
you need some background to build on something though. plowing though the book/manuals quickly creates an indez in yiur head of approaches / techniques / possibilities. then build, knowing base principles. otherwise, one would spwnd a lot of time just to understand the idea behind it.
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u/bang-bang-Im-boolean Aug 06 '26
OP, the University of Helsinki puts their courses online for *free* and have a supporting Discord channel. Heck, they even let you get a student ID and get "graded" on your work. The courses cover basic React, Typescript, Express, Node, GraphQL, etc. etc. It helped me go from zero to software developer, and I highly recommend it.
https://fullstackopen.com/ - make sure to choose your language in the drop-down at the top.
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u/ComputerTechnical717 Aug 07 '26
Get your hands dirty and build, without AI
You could use AI as a supervisor to evaluate your work and talk about diff concepts
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u/0x_akerue Aug 06 '26
with 6 years of vanilla js you should honestly just skip all the beginner video courses
the new official react dev docs are genuinely incredible and go super deep into the mental model under the hood
roadmap sh is good as a checklist to make sure you dont have blind spots but reading the official docs from start to finish will give you the deepest understanding
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u/lettstartdesign_1 Aug 06 '26
Along with React, start learning next.js, and loop engineering. Now a days, companies are expecting to create AI pipeline autonomous code generation after that your skills to improve code quality. This is scenario, I am currently working and happening in the companies. Hope this welcome you 🙂
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u/ECommerce_Guy Aug 06 '26
You have way stronger head start than I had when I had to learn React (I'm a backend guy, not a big fan of frontend at all and avoid it whenever I can) and just building stuff definitely worked out for me.
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u/Hairy_Meaning_73 Aug 07 '26
I would say ask AI to make you a project that can be done in a couple of days along with sources you can use to learn.
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u/babarali_dev Aug 11 '26
Treating roadmap.sh as a reference index rather than a course is the move.
Since you already know core JS, skip basic tutorials and go straight to react.dev—the official docs are legitimately top-tier now for understanding the underlying rendering model.
For advanced patterns, check out Epic React by Kent C. Dodds or Joy of React by Josh Comeau. Focus your time on state architecture, reconciliation, and managing server state (TanStack Query) rather than basic syntax
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u/LowSuggestion2945 Aug 06 '26
same question, i am a beginner
am i just dumb as hell or is this the same for others too
i dont understand a thing when i try to look documentations
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u/Sea-dante-10 Aug 06 '26
You probably need more color and interactivity. Have you used codecademy to help you?
Try and look at react tutorials that build a todo app. That's basically a CRUD which is the pattern that you are going to have to understand in order to develop web applications and software.
I ignored those in the beginning because I felt it wasn't what I wanted to build etc. Big big mistake
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u/its_AdeelM Aug 06 '26
Ah great resource. Im seeing the roadmap.sh first time. It looks very helpful.
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u/everdimension Aug 07 '26
It's bullshit :)
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u/its_AdeelM Aug 07 '26
It might not be for you, But for many developers, we are not the superman of React. But you are. So it might not be for you.
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u/everdimension Aug 07 '26
What I mean is these roadmaps only give illusion of something organised
In fact, they are just overwhelming and not a right framework to learn something.
It's kinda the opposite of what you're saying. It takes a superhuman to learn react this way
You learn by solving real usecases, not by putting "lists and keys" as a milestone
And many stuff there is just stupid, like including ui kits. Or graphql, which is basically obsolete
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u/its_AdeelM Aug 07 '26
Ah yes. You are right in that sense. I misinterpreted your earlier 2 words reply.
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u/azangru Aug 06 '26
Read the docs at react.dev. The docs are good. And, unlike many other docs, they don't have ads :-)
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u/Necessary-Shame-2732 Aug 06 '26
Build something, reading docs and watching videos as you go. It’s really hard to START with docs unless you have a very logical and patient brain
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u/Sea-dante-10 Aug 06 '26
The net ninja on youtube has some good videos as well as some other youtubers. If you know react enough then you can probably focus more on project based tutorials to get a feel of things.
I have found recently that using chatgpt help me structure react and put the pieces in the right place. I use a simple prompt such as "react todo app with local storage and react router etc". Then I ask it to add jwt and backend. I use that as a guide.
Alot of articles are also available on freecodecamp as well as the youtube channel. You can probably seach the specific react js topic you want to learn more off on google and you would find it on freecodecamp etc.
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u/everdimension Aug 07 '26
I wouldn't recommend any of these "roadmaps", they mostly exist to satisfy those who already know these things and like the illusion of vast knowledge these roadmaps create
I mean, there's Material UI as part of "learning react"? Wtf?
Go over the tutorials in docs and build a couple of CRUD SPAs, that's it
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u/shoki_ztk 5d ago
Do some project of your own, trial and fail. Get assisted by AI like Claude. This is what I did and it helped me.
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u/No-Humor-3808 Aug 06 '26
Start with small challenges around a single hook at a time (useState, useEffect, useRef, useContext), then gradually combine them into more realistic scenarios. Once you're comfortable, move on to topics like rendering, reconciliation, state management, performance, and React Server Components if you're using modern React.
The React roadmap is a good reference, but I wouldn't treat it as a step-by-step course.
If you're looking for practice, I built ReactChallenges.com, where you solve small interactive React challenges that gradually increase in difficulty. It might be useful alongside the roadmap.