How much JavaScript you need to know to use React?
Find out if you have to learn something before diving into learning React
If you are willing to learn React, you first need to have a few things under your belt. There are some prerequisite technologies you have to be familiar with, in particular related to some of the more recent JavaScript features you’ll use over and over in React.
Sometimes people think one particular feature is provided by React, but instead it’s just modern JavaScript syntax.
There is no point in being an expert in those topics right away, but the more you dive into React, the more you’ll need to master those.
I will mention a list of things, with pointers to articles I wrote that can help you get up to speed quickly:
- JavaScript classes
- ES Modules
- The basics of asynchronous programming: callbacks, promises, async/await
- Arrow functions
- this
- The spread operator
- Destructuring assignments
- Object literals
- Functional programming with JavaScript
I wrote 17 books to help you become a better developer, download them all at $0 cost by joining my newsletter
JOIN MY CODING BOOTCAMP, an amazing cohort course that will be a huge step up in your coding career - covering React, Next.js - next edition February 2025