react-howto

React-howto is a short written guide to help beginners make sense of the React ecosystem without getting lost in the wrong tools at the wrong time. It was written by one of the original Facebook engineers who helped build and open-source React, and is aimed at people who already know basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript but find the surrounding landscape of React-related tools confusing.

The core advice in the guide is to learn things in a specific order and not skip ahead. Start with React itself, using only the official tutorial and a plain HTML file. Only after getting comfortable with React should you move on to npm, then bundlers like webpack, then ES6, then routing, and finally state management via Flux or Redux. The guide emphasizes that most apps do not need all of these tools, and that adding them too early is a common source of confusion.

The guide pushes back on several pieces of common advice from the time it was written. It argues that Flux (a data management pattern from Facebook) is often added before it is actually needed, and that you will know when you need it because your components will start to feel broken without it. It also notes that the popular Create React App tool is a good starting point but has limits, and that server-side rendering and inline styles are advanced topics most beginners should ignore entirely.

The document is a plain Markdown file with no code to install or run. It is a reading resource, not a library. It was written in the early years of React when the ecosystem felt particularly fragmented, and some of the specific tool recommendations (such as avoiding require.js) reflect that historical context. The general principle, which is to resist learning the entire stack at once, remains a practical approach for anyone starting out with a new framework.