Lev Lazinskiy

R1D7 Reading Mastering React

I didn’t get a lot of coding done today, but I continued to read through Mastering React Native.

In order to get into the React way of thinking, which is very different from traditional web application development, we went through a good exercise thinking about how to break apart a complex component (a news feed application) into its smallest reusable parts.

I also learned more about JavaScript XML (JSX) which is the main dialect that is used when developing React applications.

I continued thinking about what I wrote about yesterday in regards to using frameworks that solve problems that I don’t yet have. This theme continued in the book and Masiello did a great job priming the reader for it. During the introduction of JSX, Masiello notes

“So far, everything we’ve seen in this component could easily be created using only HTML. Rest assured, React provides several ways of making this component more interesting and useful.”

You have to let you brain ignore the “so what” and “why do I need this question” in order to open it up for learning.

The whole idea of React reminds me of functional programming where you write very simple, small pieces of code, and then bring them all together to perform complex tasks.

“Composition has other uses besides making increasingly more complex components from smaller, simpler building blocks.”