React Key Concepts: Consolidate your knowledge of React's core features

I have had familiarity with Maximilian Schwarzmuller for some time now. His courses are a frequent suggestion on various web developer learning forums, such as those found on Reddit and Discord. I myself had looked at the courses he has offered online and found them always to be up-to-date, full of clear examples and valuable instruction. In fact, I have referred to his videos in the past during my own tutoring of these topics, sometimes discovering a simpler way to cover a topic that has my students (oftentimes pre-college aged), to understand the concept better.A drawback to these fantastic videos however is how easy it is to begin to listen to them passively. I often find myself losing focus when confronted with video lessons. It is all too easy, it seems, to open a new tab or lose focus through some other distraction, only to find that you’ve missed some salient point in the video lesson, forcing you to backtrack and listen to the same audio over again.So of course when I had the opportunity to preview some early chapters of his upcoming book published by Packt, I leapt at the opportunity. And let me tell you, I was not disappointed.Maximilian’s new book React Key Concepts is a fantastic resource for anyone looking to dive into the world of React. It has all of the hallmarks of Max’s teaching style that you find in his video courses. The lessons are clear and written almost as though you are hearing him speak next to you, using understandable terms and phrasing, allowing you to focus on the topic at hand rather than decipher a convoluted explanation. His code examples are simple enough for a beginner to follow, while still, and demonstrating the key concepts clearly. The chapters are presented in digestible sizes, allowing you to approach each topic separately and develop a foundational mastery over it.The book opens up covering what React is and how it differs from Vanilla JS, allowing the beginner to understand the use cases of React. Chapter 2 covers, among other things, components as a concept and JSX, diving into component anatomy, why you might use components, proper naming conventions, dynamic content, and dividing your page into components. Next he discusses props and all of the fancy ways you can use props, from prop drilling, to spread operators, children, etc. Chapter 4 covers Events and state at length, spending over 30 pages on the concept, with plenty of examples and several links to supplementary resources for the beginner. Chapter 5 looks into rendering lists and conditional content, covering concepts such as keys and maps.Each chapter ends with a brief quiz to test your knowledge as well as a challenge project that builds upon the previous chapter, making sure any beginner can test themselves before moving on to more advanced topics.I loved these chapters so much that I have already purchased the complete copy, which I intend to read fully and afterwards I will update this review with more specific observations.If you are a novice developer or even a more intermediate one moving from another framework, I highly recommend this book and suggest it become a well-worn book on your bookshelf. It will serve as a great reference & learning tool for anyone diving into the world of React.

After having read the official React documentation, and then later finding and reading this book, this book is by far better. If you are learning React, or are an intermediate React dev, this book is the best why to understand how all the parts of React actually come together. The author does an extremely good job of showing how to use the various parts: components, props, useState, useEffect, useRef, useCallback, useMemo, useContext, routing, etc. The author also does a very good job of explaining why these things exist and how to use them together. The writing style is easy to read, and the code examples are excellent. They are succinct, but get the point across very well.

This is one of the best books that I’ve read on React. I highly recommend it. Prior to reading this, I had a decent grasp on state management, effects, react’s component lifecycle, etc. This book helped solidify those concepts. On top of that, I learned new approaches like using context providers, and react router (these are game changers).

I struggled with React but this book breaks down the concepts in the way that is very easy to understand for beginners and answers 'why?' which is very important to understand when learning new framework. 100% recommend.

I wish I could give more stars. I am 4 chapters in and I am so happy about the writing style, the summarized points at the end of the chapter the exercises! This book presents all the key concepts of React in a direct, clear and precise way. I am a professional backend developer just starting with React, and I love this book. If you are reading comments to decide if you should get this book, do it!!! You will not be disappointed. This is not a paid review btw! Haha. I truly love this book.

There are many React books and online tutorials, but this book is different. If you have learned some React but are somewhat confused by what is going on behind the scene, this book is for you. The book does not seem to teach us React with a reasonably complicated sample project, which is most of those online tutorials do, it focus on the "key concepts" of React as the title of the book indicates. It demystifies confusions you may have if you are a curious and detail oriented programmer.

Very good book. Written in a simple language. Thus book could be further improved by adding topics such as state management using Redux and including more diagrams wherever necessary.

Faccio la dovuta premessa che sono quasi due anni e mezzo che lavoro intensamente con react, ma questo libro mi ha comunque insegnato molto, credo che sia il miglior libro su react che abbia mai letto

Great book with good description of main react concepts and useful practical lesson to understand and learn material better.

I love this book and it provides a great reference. The author is extremely knowledgeable and conveys fairly complex concepts in a very easy to understand way. The book itself is easy to read and high quality. Very pleased.

Les points positifs: Déroulement de l'enseignement de React bien pensé, dans le sens où le lecteur peut vérifier ce qu'il apprend tout en apprenant dans une logique basée sur le pragmatisme de ce que l'on construit d'abord et dans l'ordre où on le construit: on apprend ce qu'est la libraire Javascript React, ce qu'est un composant, comment on prend en charge les "props", les évènements à la façon Javascript puis React en expliquant pourquoi on fait ainsi, via les "hook" de base, et le style, etc.... petit à petit, on apprend les autres "Hook" de façon utile et logique dans le déroulement de l'apprentissage. De plus, c'est un apprentissage qui tient compte en 2023 de la dernière version majeure de React (la 18, mais ça devrait être écrit de façon plus visible un peu partout, et dès le départ) et dans son style de Composant Fonctions (et non plus Classes). Enfin, c'est très bien expliqué (parfois un peu trop en longueur, mais c'est parce que je connais déjà bien React que ça me fait cet effet). Et avec une syntaxe de code qui suit les standards usuels modernes de Javascript (ce qui est agréable à lire comme code) et un souci de la clarté d'écriture du code (pas forcément de l'algo le plus fou fou, mais c'est autre chose). Vraiment, ce livre peu s'adresser à un débutant en React et un niveau moyen voir faible en Javascript (ça suffit je pense pour suivre).Le point négatif, c'est qu'il n'est pas ou presque pas aborder la partie SSR de l'utilisation de React en version 18 (puisque elle est très spécifique et qu'il est difficile de trouver beaucoup d'exemples et de tutos sur ce sujet principalement... surtout si on compte utiliser un plugin de template html pour l'envoyer côté serveur, chose compliquée avec React-18 qui mériterait un bon chapitre sur le sujet).Si il y avait beaucoup de bons livres de code sur React.js, j'aurais mis 4 étoiles pour cet oubli, mais comme il y a peu de livres sur React.js-18 et que celui-ci est bien fait dans son ensemble, je suis sympa, je met 5 étoiles. Franchement, je suis difficile parce que ça fait longtemps que je programme et il devient difficile de lire des bons livres de code depuis quelques années (on dirait que la médiocrité est devenu une norme). Celui-ci est un bon livre que je conseil, c'est un très bon travail et surtout, écrit de façon très pédagogue. Bravo.