I did the same thing! When I started at my current job about a year ago, I had to work in a team of 3 on a Gatsby site. There was a learning curve and it wasn't a graceful transition from HTML/CSS/JS to a JS Framework, but I don't think it would have been much different if we'd started on a React site instead.
So from my personal experience I don't think it is a massive concern if you start using Gatsby without React experience first, since syntactically they're the same, Gatsby just has some extra frills and features.
You will learn React along the way and in future you can make React sites without Gatsby. :)
To add to this, Gatsby even makes some things, like routing, easier to implement. So coming from HTML/CSS/JS sites that doesn't have the concept of routing, it can make the transition into JS Frameworks a little bit smoother.
I would definitely recommend that you do learn how to implement these things "the hard way", but by all means get your Gatsby site going first!
I did the same thing! When I started at my current job about a year ago, I had to work in a team of 3 on a Gatsby site. There was a learning curve and it wasn't a graceful transition from HTML/CSS/JS to a JS Framework, but I don't think it would have been much different if we'd started on a React site instead.
So from my personal experience I don't think it is a massive concern if you start using Gatsby without React experience first, since syntactically they're the same, Gatsby just has some extra frills and features.
You will learn React along the way and in future you can make React sites without Gatsby. :)
To add to this, Gatsby even makes some things, like routing, easier to implement. So coming from HTML/CSS/JS sites that doesn't have the concept of routing, it can make the transition into JS Frameworks a little bit smoother.
I would definitely recommend that you do learn how to implement these things "the hard way", but by all means get your Gatsby site going first!
Awesome feedback, and thank you for sharing your experience! I'm glad to know it's certainly possible 😁