Why are most React tutorials outdated?
If you are learning React using a book or an online tutorial, you may be in for an unpleasant surprise. One minute you are following along, and then you get pissed off once you realise that the instructions you are following are hopelessly outdated. Even 5-star tutorials are best-selling books won’t protect you from that.
Take a deep breath.
Unfortunately, that is the truth of life. That’s just the way it is. Sooner or later all tutorials will be outdated, and my bet is on sooner. React itself is a work in progress. For example, a year ago we didn’t know what the hooks were, now we can’t live without them.
Don’t lose your cool.
I would suggest that the best way to deal with that is to learn to read the documentation. React has excellent documentation — one of the best in the business. All of it is freely available at https://reactjs.org/docs/
Moreover, you can turn those roadblocks into learning opportunities. Once you stumble on something not working, stop right there and take that opportunity to understand why. In the long term that experience will be far more valuable than just following tutorials.
Happy coding!
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Originally published at https://ozmoroz.com on October 21, 2019.
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