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How do I progress as a React Dev and other confusions.

I've hit a brick wall. How do I progress as a React Dev and other confusions.

SandeepGamot on September 13, 2020

It's been 4 months that I've learnt just enough React to build some very basic apps that consume API and can also dynamically handle routes. So f...
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Justin Hunter

This is a sign of growth and it’s a great and normal thing. The fact that you’ve made it this far means you’ve cleared the most difficult hurdle.

To help you power through this, I would recommend not focusing on a specific technology (i.e. TypeScript) and instead focus on building something interesting to you. In doing that, you’ll be pushing through challenges you’d never even encounter when trying to find tutorials and build other people’s examples. This, of course, assumes you aren’t working for a company already building a production app.

I’d also note that refactoring code to add new feature is learning. It’s an important part and you shouldn’t run from it. You should pat yourself on the back for every refactor and every new thing you learn 😀

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Zacharias Enochsson

Agree! In fact, in my opinion every feature you add should involve some amount of refactoring, or you’ve been doing to much (potentially wasteful) work prematurely.

Besides: continuous refactoring is one of those good old practices that are all too often forgotten these days. As I see it, the only way to write maintainable code is to constantly maintain it.

“Getting it right the first time“ rarely happens. And when it does, it only means that in three years it will be seen as “that scary legacy code” no one dares touch with a ten foot pole because they have no idea how it works.

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SandeepGamot

Thanks alot, Justin! 😃😃

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Manassarn "Noom" Manoonchai

Add tests & linters, choose a style guide to follow, use Husky to add git hooks and it will check your code before every commits/pushes.
I do this even if the project is small to get good at making the code cleaner every time I touch it. In Javascript world things changed rapidly, I make sure to be ready for any changes with high test coverage & clean codebase. I have no fear if I replace Redux with Recoil (or replace all JS with TS) if my tests still passes, for instance. I like to see the project "grow" with me, as a developer :)

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Jason Leung 🧗‍♂️👨‍💻 • Edited

If you have been using create-react-app, you should have a look at Next.js or GatsbyJS. Both are used in production by companies. While learning them, you will write more server-side code which can help you gain exposure. You will also learn more about performance since it is what those frameworks optimize for.

To learn more about best practices, thanks to the internet we now have different ways to access the wisdom of other devs. Here are some of my favorites:

Building side projects is the best way to get a job. They can be a Codepen, hosted website, or coursework(check out Wes's courses above). You mentioned you have "built a number of projects with React that just work fine". Showcase them in your resume and I am sure you can find a junior web developer job. Look for a position that uses modern stacks and has a good team that you can learn from.

Regarding TypeScript, my suggestion is don't sweat it. Yes, there are companies that use TypeScript and I like it myself. But I am sure you can find a job that doesn't use TypeScript or doesn't require you to be a TS expert. From my personal experience, it can be frustrating to learn TypeScript and React/Nextjs/Gatsby together. Instead, you can try to use TypeScript in a side project with a framework that you are already familiar with, such as CRA. For your future reference, React TypeScript Cheatsheets will be helpful.

We all have our time of confusion. The important thing is we are making progress towards our goals. 🍻

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SandeepGamot

This a super comment, useful links there. Thanks alot!

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hangindev profile image
Jason Leung 🧗‍♂️👨‍💻 • Edited

You are welcome. I turned it into a post to include more resources. Hope it helps. Cheers!

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Johnny Navarro • Edited

Hello! Well, I think knowing TypeScript is in huge demand everywhere, not only with React, so it could be definitely worth it if you made the transition into it. I've seen a lot of posts here in Dev about how to start using TypeScript in React, I would look into one of those. Not really related to "design patterns" or anything but I'm just curious, are you working with vanilla React? (I.e.: Create React App)? Because if you are, learning React based frameworks like Gatsby or Next.js (particularly Next) could be a good next step for you as a React dev. Other than keeping the code clean, using frameworks like Next.js allows you to build production ready React apps with neat features like code splitting, static generated pages, server side rendering, etc, that overall improve the performance of your apps. It even helps with SEO (which by the way is awful in vanilla React). Knowing how to use Next (or even Gatsby if you want) could improve your changes on landing a React job. Good luck!

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SandeepGamot

Alright Johnny, thanks a lot, will surely look into learning those. Thank you.

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pentacular

There is no magic bullet.

Learning is driven by surprise, failure, and practice.

Take the time to understand what surprises you properly and deeply enough that it won't surprise you again.

Take the time to understand the root causes of your failures. This will generally not be obvious to you (because if it were obvious, you wouldn't have failed that way).

Take care to practice doing things right -- if you practice doing things wrong, you'll get better at ... doing things wrong.

Now go out, fail in surprising ways frequently, practice being right, and be fruitful. :)

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Aleksei Berezkin • Edited

Hi Sandeep

some feature addition requires either a lot of refactoring

This means you are on the right path! You understand that the code needs to be clean in order to add features.

Now, how to code to avoid the constant need to refactor... This is tough question indeed; unfortunately even mature projects sometimes require refactorings or even complete rewrites. And that's not always because of design mistakes: not everything may be foreseen in the beginning.

SOLID principles are certainly helpful. But keep in mind they are designed mainly for OOP which is not considered today as the only way to code. The most universal principle IMO is orthogonality: try to design different parts of application so that they don't depend on others implementation details. That's not 100% possible but can be achieved to some degree.

Helpful thing is defining boundaries between components, and that's where TypeScript shines. It allows you to clearly define API: object shapes, functions etc which are used to transfer data between components.

Keep going and good luck!

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SandeepGamot

Thanks alot aleksei!!

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Chidiebere Ogujeiofor

Hello. The concern you currently have is a very good one. It shows that you are interested in learning how to write better software and not just get stuff to work. That's a very healthy ambition.

One thing that helped me to learn this was building projects with folks that are more advanced than I am. I have found that one or two of these kinds of projects can help you learn a ton(literally every day of working with these senior folks).

So if you have any in your network you could do well to interact with them on this idea

Finally, I think you are very correct, TypeScript is something you need in your arsenal. However, I think solving the spaghetti issue should be of higher priority(you can do both at the same time you see)

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SandeepGamot

Thanks Chidiebere, stepping up!

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Médéric Burlet • Edited

Hey don't pick your brain to hard on this.

We had the same issue with comse clients at times. They completly wanna change the flow of a system and it means refactoring the whole system. It is normal and this is why you should have a strong testing pipeline to align with such consequential changes.

One thing tho think about when building an APP (regardless of language) is to think scalability. Take a simple notification system you could do it very easily as a json payload but then what. What if in the future you want to add an action to the notification or also add tracking of interactions (views / clicks). What if you want to add priority to notifications?

The idea is any feature asked from a client should be easily scalable this might mean that you will need to put extra work at the beginning to make it easily scalable. This is why when building an app it is also important to understand where the business is gonna go. What are their future plans to make sure that the piece you create will also be compatible for any other future dev they have planned.

Ideally you should always be thinking on how will the feature be expanded in the future.

On the note of Typescript do learn it and do use it if you can. It forces you to write much more rigorous and structured code.

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SandeepGamot

Was on the fence with learning typescript, now its clear typescript is the way to go. Thank you.

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Annie Taylor Chen

If you want to find a job in a company:

  • learn typescript as it's used commonly in a team
  • learn testing
  • seek internship and get referees to vet you as a developer
  • when you intern, you can learn how to function in a team and learn form seniors by reading their code

If you want to be a successful freelancer

  • make amazing, eye-catching portfolio and demo sites, that's close to what your clients would want, such as landing page, small e-commerce store, home page for small companies etc
  • network like crazy
  • study algorithm hard enough to pass entry test to gain access to some freelancer platform, they will find clients for you (but some might require working experience too)

No matter which, you can also try studying Gatsby or Next.js as they're commonly used React-based frameworks. Know when to use which. Also, this year is extremely tough for everyone, including developers. :( So besides seeking opportunities, we will also have to improve our skills in every way to stay competitive.

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daltonfury42 • Edited

Hi Sandeep. Some actionable advice, I hope

I think the best way to go about doing this is to collaborate with others and work on some open-source project. When you do hobby projects, you learn the framework/language. You would also pick up some design patterns, but you learn 10x when you work with "veterans" on production grade projects. These you learn though code reviews, discussions on issues etc.

I recently came across Typescript website... and they have done a lot to make it collaborator friendly. There is a roadmap here: github.com/microsoft/TypeScript-We...

Look for issues labelled "You can do this" (github.com/microsoft/TypeScript-We...)

Raise a few PRs.. PRs against "You can do this" might be accepted. You will learn a lot when you make the changes, and but learn twice as much when your PR gets reviewed.

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SandeepGamot

That is useful link, thank you!!

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Mike Bybee • Edited

Take these steps:

  1. Breathe. You can do this.
  2. Remember that it's just JavaScript. Focus on REALLY learning that, and your React obstacles will become much easier to get past.
  3. Don't obsess over SOLID or especially DRY (if you're in too much of a rush to abstract what appears to be duplicate code, you may miss some critical edge cases - but also focus mostly on functional components and hooks so you're not repeating the same class methods over and over again).

TypeScript is good to learn to for getting a job, but dangerous if you rely on it as a crutch, a replacement for a solid understanding of JavaScript qua JavaScript. That type "safety" goes out the window in runtime, after your code is transpiled to JavaScript. See step 2 above, and take it to heart. Personally, I hate that so many people are imposing TS (and all the extra learning curve that comes with it) on less experienced devs (who you should be encouraging to learn JS as it is - loosely and dynamically typed), especially when you can achieve the same things with proper JSDoc comments and ESLint (and even get the same Intellisense if you enable ts-check for JavaScript in VS Code), without all the unnecessary, nonstandard syntax.

Even if you don't use it (I haven't in my own projects for over a year now), Redux is good to learn for getting a job (I'd guess about 50-75% of React roles are still using Redux) and because it relies on so many concepts that translate to programming in general (reducers, middleware, pure functions, etc.).

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Andrew Baisden • Edited

Put together a list of projects that you want to create. Something exciting and that will challenge you. For the projects make sure that they increase in complexity so that you are forced to learn new things. And then just build!

You can even take it one step further and work on projects that solve real world problems. Make them open source and put them on GitHub.

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Alex Boutin

Hey there!
No language would be more or less oriented for a SOLID approach, but learning Typescript can never hurt for a career since it will help you grow as a developer compared to using only Javascript.

Most challenge as a dev who want to apply best practice is.. well applying best practice from the start. It's easy to write spaghetti code and tell yourself you'll change it moving forward, but if you get guidelines (something like that) and apply them from the start, it's always easier to go forward.

Another thing I find that help, is finding other people to look at your projects. Working alone remove the pressure to do something SOLID.

If you are looking for experience that will tell companies "Look here, I know what I'm doing" don't give up. it took me 6 months to find a good Dev job that I like, but something that can help getting attraction is focusing where you want to apply and making your resume look like their website (I'm trying to find the posting here on Dev that mentioned it, will edit when I find it). It gives a punch and help you make things according to a wireframe instead of just what seems easy.

Anyway, hope my comment helps,
Have a great day!

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David Israel

See our blog here - can you add us to your list?

Thank you,
David

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SandeepGamot

Hey, felipe that's a great resource I've personally found myself learning alot through reading through other's elegant code. And your repo brings it all together. Thanks man helped alot.

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Nikil Sriram

Hi.. knowing typescript is awesome because it can help with the process of getting errors. But I don’t think it’d help much on getting more clients

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Ben Read

TS isn’t required To be a good developer, but it will improve your code and help you understand JavaScript types better.