TIL my first React project was doomed because I skipped the basics

Spent 3 months building a todo app with React hooks and everything looked fine until I hit a bug that took me 2 days to fix. Turned out I never understood how state updates actually work in JavaScript closures. My mentor looked at my code and said 'you built a house on sand.' Anyone else jump into a framework too fast and have to go back to vanilla JS to fix your mess?

2 comments

2 Comments

parkernelson1mo ago

Wait, is it really that bad to skip the basics though? Like, why spend weeks on vanilla JS when you could be building real projects that actually work and look good? That todo app showed you could ship something functional even if the internals were a bit shaky. Honestly, the whole "you need to understand closures and prototypes first" thing feels gatekeepy to me. Frameworks exist to save us from that low-level stuff in the first place. Most devs I know learned on the job by breaking things and then patching them up later. Maybe your mentor just wanted you to feel dumb for a second.

angela19129d ago

Nah, I feel you on this one. The whole "you must suffer through vanilla JS before touching anything fun" attitude gets old real fast. Most people learn way better by messing up a real project than by memorizing abstract concepts they can't see the point of yet.