Ask HN: Best React and TypeScript book for experienced programmers?

25 points by manuelabeledo 4y ago ↗ HN

After almost a couple decades dedicated to backend development, I happened to end up in a typescript/node/react shop. Job is great! But for the first time, I feel like I'm lacking the basics to perform adequately.

So far, it seems that most of the resources I have been consulting are very opinionated, i.e. in many areas, there seem to be too much flexibility, at least compared to other programming languages and/or frameworks.

I have to take a quite long flight in a few hours, and I would love to dive in a book (books?) that could help me bridge the gap between what I now know, i.e. Java + Spring, Python + Flask, a bit of Rust + Rocket, etc., and what I need to know, this being modern Typescript, Node.js, and React programming.

Thanks in advance folks.

10 comments

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matthewwolfe 4y ago ↗

If you haven’t already, step 1 would be to read through the React docs. I think there is a beta version floating around for React 18, but the current docs are definitely sufficient. Maybe pair that with a local environment setup to run the examples, maybe a codesandbox if you don’t want to figure out how to get an environment set up immediately

wetpaws 4y ago ↗

https://reactjs.org/

huy-nguyen 4y ago ↗

The React team is working on a beta version of React tutorial that is much more organized and up to date (using function components and hooks instead of classes) than what’s in the production site: https://beta.reactjs.org/learn. I think it’s easily the best tutorial out there because it explains concepts very clearly.

puma_ambit 4y ago ↗

This is a great resource, and the docs are always better than someone’s interpretation in some course or book.

just_mc 4y ago ↗

I haven't read this book, but this guys videos are really good and he focuses quite a bit on React development.

https://no-bs-ts.myshopify.com/products/no-bs-ts-the-book

puma_ambit 4y ago ↗

Without a preview of what’s inside the book, it seems kind of strange to just spend $35

just_mc 4y ago ↗

I don't disagree, the author should have included the current table of contents on the Shopify page (or anywhere really).

There is a short description here: https://youtu.be/f3Cn0CGytSQ?t=37

The code examples for each of the chapters are on GitHub here: https://github.com/jherr/no-bs-ts

[deleted] 4y ago ↗

(comment deleted)

aristofun 4y ago ↗

This is a great overview of some deep parts of TS

https://github.com/basarat/typescript-book

From personal experience the biggest issue to overcome when migrating from java etc. was to embrace prototype based OOP and the functional nature of JS (not in theoretical sense), where class keyword is just a syntax sugar over function with closures etc.

Nothing looks uglier than TS/JS code written by experienced java/C# programmer with no js experience :)

joshxyz 4y ago ↗

the official docs