Greetings everyone. This is my first post on this forum. I’ve been chugging along the classes here and just finished the section “React and Redux”.
What’s bothering me is the very last challenge where we state “Now I know React and Redux!”… Yeah, I completed these challenges but I have barely any clue what I’m doing lol. I completed them more like a detective who recognizes the patterns of what the lesson is expecting, rather than as a proficient coder who knows what the code actually means. I feel like I’ve generally understood these classes up until Redux… and that’s where I just kinda got into a haze of what any of this means that I’m coding.
Do you guys ever get in these situations where you complete these lessons without really feeling like you have a solid understanding of them whatsoever? I’m just feeling a little intimidated is all.
Absolutely. The lessons lay the groundwork. The real learning comes from completing projects.
Just attack them in small chunks, and make liberal use of the documentation. If you really feel lost, it might be helpful to supplement FCC with other sources, such as YouTube. Good video tutorials are great for reinforcing the concepts you learn here and learning how to put them to use in a practical application. There are many great channels for this. I would personally recommend Traversy Media’s videos on React and Redux if you feel you don’t have a grasp on them yet.
If your willing to spend a little money, a course I recommend on Udemy is Modern React with Redux.
They will occasionally have sales were you can get course for around $10 - $12 USD. I’m currently going through it again since it was updated for 2019. I felt the instructor of this course did a rather good job of going through how to use React and Redux the first time I took it.
I felt the same after the Redux course on here. React I can’t really relate because I learned it on Codecademy (free as well). But when I finished that React course I also felt like I had so much my head that I didn’t really understand.
As I only recently finished the Redux course and am only working on my second Redux project, hopefully my experience can help you. Here is what I would suggest:
Do Codecademy’s React course. I was able to slowly work through my first few react projects without any real problems following this course.
Use create-react-app to make several React projects until you fill comfortable with it.
Use create-react-app and install redux as well. Then try and remake the app from FCC’s React-Redux tutorial where you can type in the input box and add to a <ul></ul>. Making this app locally helped me better understand the react/redux architecture.
Try and figure out any problems you run into using the classic Google search, react-redux tutorials, your notes if you took them, or a post to this forum. I had to ask for a bit of help on this forum for my first React-Redux app and got the help I needed before I had even returned to the project.
If you have any questions about the above suggestions, happy to help.
Edit: I’m reading through this (short read): https://medium.freecodecamp.org/the-best-way-to-architect-your-redux-app-ad9bd16c8e2d right now too and it’s further helping clarify things. I feel like this is just part of the learning to be a web developer process. Scared to try something new -> try something new and have no idea what you’re learning -> try to implement while desperately reviewing your notes -> make something that isn’t quite right -> move on to new project, after new project while refine, refine, refine -> understand implicitly -> continue learning
yes, I felt the same after the React/Redux challenges. I had to watch a react course that I think was about five hours long and after that watched and read a lot of tutorials for Redux/React-Redux. Now I kinda get the hang of it and am working on the projects.
If you follow the curriculum in the order it’s listed, the React and Redux sections are the first place where you really start seeing large code blocks, so it’s normal for your eyes to just glaze over when encountering these.
Even relatively mundane challenges, like using const for action types in Redux, have you actually doing very little, although there are large blocks of code surrounding.
There’s no shame in re-doing both of these sections. Most people require more than one read-through of something technical to really understand it. If you’re concerned with “wasting time” re-doing the sections, remember that this whole learning process is a marathon, not a sprint.
If you do attempt a re-do, don’t just rush through the challenges and hit next. Like you said, you often completed the challenges by recognizing patterns, and those answers may still be in your memory. Make sure you understand each code block.
Personally, and again referring back to this process as a marathon, I would recommend reading the actual React and Redux documentation. This isn’t meant to diminish the quality of the FCC lessons, but I think that both of these documentations are more comprehensible for someone who’s learning.
The React docs include two ways to learn the library: by building a Tic-Tac-Toe game, or just by reading. The basic Redux tutorial goes through building a To-Do app.
Hey just wanted to thank all of you guys. All of you gave great advice and reference material! I’ve swallowed my pride and am now actually going through the React and Redux lessons again and taking “good notes”. Things are becomming a lot clearer now lol.
Don’t worry. Redux is really abstract. It introduces a lot of new parts that don’t really intuitively make sense, and they only become obviously useful at scale. I remember feeling the exact way as you did when finishing that section, and now I have stopped using Redux for the past few projects I feel that way again.