The Road to React: Your journey to master plain yet pragmatic React.js

This guide is a delight as a guide in helping me learn React. I found it to be more ‘accessible’ than some of the other books I’ve tried to use. The examples with their explanations to go with the visuals have made this an essential tool for me to learn the material.

The Road to React is pretty unique. It manages to be immediately useful (detailed tutorial style) while also explaining deeper concepts along the way. Each chapter is focused on an individual concept while also building on familiar examples. There is code to make sure the reader is able to follow along - both in JavaScript and TypeScript. For me - having a little React experience - the book helps me systemize my knowledge and understand the bigger picture. For someone without prior React knowledge, the book might be more useful to get started with the basics and a subsequent reading might allow more focus on understanding of the framework and its interactions. It is very obvious the book author is experienced teacher as well, since the material is presented in both a dense and approachable way.

When you purchase the Kindle version of the book, the author will unlock the online version of the book for you if you send him an email containing a copy of the Amazon invoice. This confers a couple of important advantages: 1) the code samples are MUCH more readable in the online version (they don't typeset well on the Kindle version) and 2) the author's hand-drawn diagrams online are larger and much more visible (they shrink down to the point of being tiny on the Kindle.)Basically the Kindle version is the author's way of monetizing all of the work he has done online for the community. It is absolutely worth the US$29.99 to obtain a frequently updated resource on 'modern' ReactJS, including the use of purely functional components with a React Hooks-first approach to coding. There is enough handholding in the early chapters of the book to get the reader up to speed on the more modern version of JavaScript, but not so much as to be bothersome for the experienced JavaScript dev. The explanation of the data flow is first rate.If I have one complaint that's keeping me from giving this five stars, it's the typesetting of the Kindle version. I'm not sure if it is possible given the constraints of a Kindle to make code samples look good and diagrams sized appropriately. They do work a little better if you're using the online Kindle reader, but still are nowhere nearly as good as the web version of the book.Buy the Kindle version to support the author; use the Web version.

I am almost half way through studying the book. I can confidently say that this is an excellent technical book because it combines theory and practice. The author does this on each aspect of React. For example using "Arrow Functions to define a component".First, he presents THOROUGHLY the concepts behind "Arrow Functions" and why use it in defining a React component in lieu of the traditional JavaScript "function" keyword. Then follows up with an exhaustive example on how to use the expression.Robin adopted this approach in every aspect of React that are included in the book (e.g. props, hooks, useState, ...etc). I feel that my learning curve flattened a great deal.Another plus for buying this book is the access to regularly updated digital copy and completedexercises. It also enables you to join "Slack". Slack is a messaging app for teams, a place you can collaborate on projects and organize conversations — so you can work together, no matter where you are.Finally, I find the author very approachable. You can ask him questions pertaining to the materials in the book and responds promptly within reason.

I wanted a tutorial book that defined every step of what it took to make a modern React Application, had a wide set of features to allow me to explore lots of React's tools and provided some explanation of when to use one tool or approach vs another. This book did that AND provided more details via the author's technical blog, and references to Javascript documentation. The optional exercises that he added on top of the tutorial provide an opportunity to explore even more details about why React developers make one decision over another. So this book doesn't just tell you the how, it provides multiple options and provides some support for the why of each, and helps you make your own decisions. This book is VERY thorough. From initializing the folder all the way through to deploying.