The Right Order to Learn React

React itself is a small library. Most of the complexity people associate with React comes from the ecosystem around it—build tools, state management libraries, styling solutions, and frameworks. The key to learning React effectively is sequencing your learning so you understand the problems before you reach for the solutions.

Judge Every Abstraction

Before adding any abstraction to your workflow or application, ask two questions: What is the benefit? What is the cost? If you can't answer both, you might be paying a price for a solution to a problem you don't have—a cost with no benefit.

For example, jQuery offered convenient cross-browser helpers. Here's a typical toggleClass implementation from youmightnotneedjquery.com:

// $(el).toggleClass(className);

function toggleClass(el, className) {
	if (el.classList) {
		el.classList.toggle(className)
	} else {
		var classes = el.className.split(' ')
		var existingIndex = -1
		for (var i = classes.length; i--; ) {
			if (classes[i] === className) existingIndex = i
		}

		if (existingIndex >= 0) {
			classes.splice(existingIndex, 1)
		} else {
			classes.push(className)
		}

		el.className = classes.join(' ')
	}
}

But if you don't need to support IE8, this entire abstraction becomes unnecessary:

// $(el).toggleClass(className)

function toggleClass(el, className) {
	el.classList.toggle(className)
}

el.classList.toggle(className) is simple enough on its own. The lesson: you need to feel the pain a tool solves before you can appreciate its value. Learn React and its ecosystem in an order that lets you understand what each layer is actually saving you from.

Start with JavaScript

React is heavily JavaScript. If you can build a simple app with vanilla JavaScript and DOM APIs, you'll understand why React exists and how to use it effectively—about 90% of being productive with React is knowing JavaScript well. Before touching JSX or a compiler, make sure you're comfortable with fundamental JavaScript concepts and modern ES features. Resources like JavaScript30 and BeginnerJavaScript.com by Wes Bos, along with Kent C. Dodds' free "ES6 and Beyond Workshop" recording, cover these basics well.

Learn React Without Tooling

Much "beginner" React material starts with JSX and a complicated build setup. React itself works fine without any of it—you can start with everything in index.html files. This approach allows for rapid iteration and easy deployment for simple side projects while helping you understand where React ends and the surrounding tooling begins.

Free resources like The Beginner's Guide to React on egghead.io take this approach. Once you're comfortable, you can move to CodeSandbox.io to build entirely in the browser and download the project as a create-react-app application. Many production apps ship just fine with create-react-app, no custom configuration required.

Adding Dependencies Deliberately

Once you understand React's fundamentals, you can start considering npm dependencies. The npm documentation has valuable information worth reading through. But be disciplined: don't add a dependency until you've felt the pain it's designed to solve. Importing third-party code with ES Modules syntax also becomes relevant at this stage.

Reaching for a Framework

Building a real-world application is where a framework like Remix pays off. It handles typical application state management and provides per-route CSS loading and unloading mechanisms. The official Remix documentation is the right starting point for learning it.

State Management Without Libraries

For UI state that isn't persisted in a backend, React's useState API and "Lifting State Up" patterns work surprisingly far. Only when you genuinely hit the prop-drilling problem—when you recognize the pain firsthand—should you seek alternatives. In many cases, React itself provides sufficient application state management without extra libraries like Redux.

Styling Components

For larger apps with hundreds of lines of CSS, Tailwind's utility-first approach simplifies things conceptually. That said, Remix's route-based CSS handling means you can often get away with regular CSS for a surprisingly long time before needing a styling framework.

From there, deeper React patterns—like those covered in EpicReact.Dev and similar advanced component pattern courses—will round out your skills. The general principle stays the same throughout: add abstractions only when you understand the problem they're solving, and focus on building incrementally in the right order.