Recently Causematch decided to shift from wordpress based platform to React.js+Node.js stack. Causematch has indeed grown a lot in past few years that wordpress has become unable to handle us. We had to move on.
I was from a backend development background, and hence a complete beginner in javascript and now both our backend and frontend was going to be in js but I was excited anyway to learn all the new stuff.
Looking back now, I have come a long way in both React.js and Node.js. Here are few things that helped me on my way.
Online courses 🔗
It is no secret that there are plenty of online courses online. It took me less than 5 minutes to go to udemy.com and find a course with good reviews. Here is the one I chose: https://www.udemy.com/course/react-the-complete-guide-incl-redux. Keeping an eye on reviews is the key to selecting a good course.
I was too lazy to attend online classes for Node.js too, but I bought one anyway. https://www.udemy.com/course/the-complete-nodejs-developer-course-2/
Reading code 🔗
This is what helped me more than anything. If you ask me to choose one method, I’d choose this. Reading code written by other experienced professionals helped me a lot. It not only teaches us the language, but also the way they architect the code and the tools they use.
Official documentation/reference 🔗
Once I started coding, the official documentation and reference helped a lot in pushing through. I focused on reading and understanding the concepts more than coding. The official docs are pretty good for most tools including react, redux, express, sequelize etc. The key is to read more than you code in the beginning.
So there you go! Online courses will teach you the language, reading code will make you think like a pro and official docs will always help you while coding. There are plenty other tools including books, forums, blogs etc. Choose what works for you, and start coding!