I wanted to learn React, and I have been wandering around the Internet, looking at a zillion “how to get started” tutorials. I’m not sure what made me stop and look hard at Hacking with React, but I’m so glad I did.

Hacking with React provides a great combination:

• a progression of straightforward, short lessons toward a working example program,
• an interesting application (not another To-Do app, thank FSM!),
• a Howto for setting up some of the confusing Node.js tooling (webpack, ESLint),
• introduction to testing with Jest,
• advice about best Node/Javascript/coding practices,
• a decent understanding of how all these tools work together, and of course,
• a great walkthrough of the concepts behind React.

At the end of the forty-some tasks (which take a while to complete if you actually do the work of understanding each lesson) you have a working React application, and a pretty good understanding of the basics of starting and building a React/Node application

The book is free to read, but you should buy this book to reward this excellent work. For $10, you’ll learn a lot.