Hi David! We've discussed this in our program and debated the pros and cons of teaching class-based components, functional components with Hooks, or both. In our most recent group we taught Hooks exclusively, and I'm happy to share that it went really well. From what we saw, students can 100% jump into Hooks when they're new to React, and it gave them a sense of comfort and fluency with the most modern way of writing stateful React components. As someone who learned class-based components first, their ability to grasp Hooks so quickly and so well surprised and impressed me. A couple drawbacks to consider are the fact that so much of the React content out there uses classes, and class-based components can really draw from and strengthen students' understanding of JavaScript objects, classes, and OOP, as another commenter mentioned. But that being said, it seems like Hooks is the future of React, and as tech educators, we should consider setting students on the path toward understanding a technology in the way it will be used going forward.
Hi David! We've discussed this in our program and debated the pros and cons of teaching class-based components, functional components with Hooks, or both. In our most recent group we taught Hooks exclusively, and I'm happy to share that it went really well. From what we saw, students can 100% jump into Hooks when they're new to React, and it gave them a sense of comfort and fluency with the most modern way of writing stateful React components. As someone who learned class-based components first, their ability to grasp Hooks so quickly and so well surprised and impressed me. A couple drawbacks to consider are the fact that so much of the React content out there uses classes, and class-based components can really draw from and strengthen students' understanding of JavaScript objects, classes, and OOP, as another commenter mentioned. But that being said, it seems like Hooks is the future of React, and as tech educators, we should consider setting students on the path toward understanding a technology in the way it will be used going forward.
I totally agree with the focus to prepare students for the future. Thanks for the input!