Phase 2 - First Time Learning React

Learning React was very exciting due to the fact that I have been hearing about its popularity on the web. Before I started learning React, I was really curious about what React is and does.
React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces (source: React docs). Simply put, a JavaScript library is reusable codes written by someone else that is used to help solve common problems that developers face. Out of many great features of React, I learned that React allows you to write code Declaratively meaning you describe what a goal or result a program should accomplish instead of describing each action a program should take. This enables us to write codes more predictable and easier to manage debugging (source: React docs). Also, I learned that React is component-based meaning you build blocks that handle their own data and UI logic. I felt that writing a function that takes parameters in JavaScript in Phase 1 definitely helped make it easier for me to understand writing React’s Components. Writing JSX (an extension of vanilla JavaScript with specific syntax that looks similar to HTML) in components just made codes look easy to follow. During the phase 2 learning react, I learned how to create components, pass data to children components using props, use useEffect to fetch the data from the server, use useState dynamically to change the data as users interact with our application, make control components, handle events, use client-side routing and put together to make a web application using React. I believe that the reason I was able to easily conquer Phase 2 code challenge the first time was not only that React was efficient to learn and use but also that understating JavaScript made it easier for me to learn React. The most important part of learning React was that it made me realize that having strong and solid JavaScript knowledge would only benefit me in my future career as a developer!