Epic React Workshop Tour

Kent C. Dodds: [0:00] What is up friends? My name is Kent C. Dodds and I am super excited to be your instructor here on EpicReact.Dev. I'm going to take you through a quick tour of what's available, so you get an idea of what the scope of this thing is.

[0:12] Here, once you've logged in, you'll have access to the articles, livestreams, and podcasts that everybody has access to, but you'll also get access to the workshops. The workshops are basically self-paced workshops. We have actual code examples that you're going to work through.

[0:27] You'll be fingers on the keyboard for more time than you are actually watching stuff. We've got tests in here. We've got the actual app that you're going to be running. It is like a legit workshop that you're working through exercises and stuff.

[0:42] Here at the very start we're going to show you how to get things all set up, so you can be as successful as possible. We've got the React Fundamentals. Often when we're busy shipping and we're trying to get something out the door, we skip over the fundamentals.

[0:57] I've had people who go through this material who have been using React longer than I have and they say that they learned stuff. Because it's pretty natural to just hurry and ship something and you skip over the fundamentals. No shame, that's the way it happens.

[1:10] Here's your opportunity, if you're experienced, to go through the fundamentals and get a solid understanding of what are these building blocks that I'm building on top of? If you're totally brand new, you've never done React, React Fundamentals will get you up to speed.

[1:23] If you've never even done any React, you've never even looked at the docs before, this is going to be everything that you need to get up to speed on React. That's React Fundamentals. Lots of awesome stuff in here.

[1:33] Oh, keep in mind that each one of these links is not a single video but often multiple videos, and in some cases, many videos. We're not giving you a single video. You count all these up I think maybe, is that 50 videos or something? No, no, no. This is a zillion out of content.

[1:54] Like I said, most of your time is going to be spend in Editor anyway. We've got React Hooks to make things interactive. All the basic React hooks, we've got useState, useEffect, useRef. Really, that's all that you need to get going with building actual React applications.

[2:10] At some point, you're going to want to build more complex state management and stuff, and that's where Advanced React Hooks comes into play. We've got useReducer, useCallback, and useMemo, useContacts, useLayoutEffect, useImperativeHandle, useDebugValue, all of the hooks in Advanced React Hooks. I'll show you actual useful use cases for each one of these hooks.

[2:30] Then we have Advanced React Patterns for those abstraction builders out there, which is literally all of you, for being able to build legit abstractions that will scale over time, because they will optimize for change.

[2:43] We've got a bunch of abstraction patterns that I've learned through the use in building DownshiftJS, an open source library, that I created, as well as observing other open source libraries and tools, and the patterns that they implement.

[2:57] These are both hooks and component patterns that you'll really enjoy in our Advanced React Patterns Workshop. Then we have React Performance. It wouldn't be epic without some talk on performance.

[3:08] React is really fast, but sometimes you're doing things that you need to make React even faster. React provides this toolbox of tools of different things you can do to optimize React components and your hooks and things. If you grab the wrong tool, if you try to use a hammer to screw on a screw, then that's not going to work very well.

[3:29] I also show you another tool or a set of tools, the browser DevTools, which will help you diagnose problems so you know which of the React optimization tools to reach for. In some cases, you know which libraries to reach for as well. That's what the React Performance is all about. You're going to enjoy that for sure.

[3:47] Testing React Apps, I like testing. I'm the creator of React Testing Library. I have a couple of opinions on how you can use it most effectively. I teach you those opinions in testing React apps. We also talk about mocking HTTP requests, which has typically been a challenging thing.

[4:07] We get into some theoretical things as well. It's not like, "Here's the API and here's how you use it." No, no, no, we're real world practical things that you're going to face on the job every day. I think you're going to enjoy that. For those abstraction builders out there, we got testing custom hooks too. Enjoy that.

[4:25] For those of you who are excited about what's coming next in React, React Suspense is what's coming next. We've got a whole workshop about this experimental feature of React. It is totally experimental. This means that things can and will change and actually have changed in some instances. We're going to need to be flexible with that.

[4:46] What's cool about React Suspense is that it gives you a declarative API for asynchrony, and that's the future of React. This will give you the exposure that you need to be able to make sure that you're future proof, and you're thinking about the ways that you're going to be building UIs in the future with React Suspense.

[5:06] I'm excited for that. Not only is this useful for the future, but it's actually useful for now. Some of these patterns, you can actually implement today without Suspense. I wouldn't recommend skipping this one even though it is experimental.

[5:19] Then we have the mothership of all the workshops, and that's Build an Epic React App. This is actually four workshops in one. It is a silly amount of content.

[5:30] Let me show you an example. Here, for our cash management, we have 24 videos on this single exercise. It is a silly amount of stuff. I'm really excited for you to just dig into building an Epic React App.

[5:45] One of the challenges for a workshop instructor like myself is making examples and exercises that are simple enough for you to be able to focus on the thing you're trying to learn, but real world enough for you to see how that thing you're trying to learn applies in the real world.

[6:01] I give you both. We get the isolated examples from all of these workshops that are as real world as I can make them and then we get an actual real-world thing, so you can build it in here. We just do one application that you build upon as you go.

[6:15] You get a solid understanding of how this application works and you can even add new features to it and explore. This is just a perfect playground for you to try out your React skills that you're developing. You can build the whole thing along with me. Very cool stuff.

[6:33] Then we get into the Epic React Expert Interviews. These are awesome conversations that I had with awesome people. Some React team members, as well as some people that you may not be as familiar with, that we just chat about cool things that they're into, that they've done, that they've created. We even talk about 3D animation in the browser. Those blows my mind. Really, really cool stuff in here. I think that you'll enjoy that a lot.

[6:58] Then right down here at the bottom, we've got Join the KCD Discord. I strongly advise that you don't go this alone. Join the discord, create a KCD Learning Club, which you can learn about at kcd.im/clubs.

[7:11] Create a learning club, a group of people who can go through this with you, so that you can lean on each other, and you can lean on the KCD Discord. There are going to be tons of people in there. There already are tons of people in there who are super helpful, super friendly, and will help you get unstuck if you ever get stuck.

[7:26] That's your wild wind tour of EpicReact.Dev. So much good stuff. I'm so excited for you to go through this. I can't wait for you to show me the amazing things that you build with the skills that you develop and learn from EpicReact.Dev.