What you have to learn before React

Learning front-end development is often overwhelming for beginners. Many of them want to learn React, but this question often keeps them from tackle the library.

While you should be comfortable with some basic JS concepts, you don't necessarily need to be a JavaScript expert to learn React (or any other UI library). Actually, you can learn React as you continue learning JavaScript.

You should have a good understanding of the fundamentals of JavaScript:

• Variables and data types
• Conditionals (in particular the ternary operator)
• Loops
• Functions
• Objects and arrays (note: in JavaScript, arrays are a type of object)

These syntatic aspects of the language are particularly important:

• Destructuring
• Arrow functions
• Spread operator

You should also be aware of these more advance topics:

• Immutability
• Asynchronous programming: promises, async/await
• Modules

It's also important to remember that you also need some knowledge of HTML and CSS. Again, you don't have to be an expert, but the more you know, the better.

Become a Better JavaScript Developer! Easy, actionable steps to level up your JavaScript skills, right to your inbox. Click here to subscribe!