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Fluent React: Build Fast, Performant, and Intuitive Web Applications
When it comes to building user interfaces on the web, React enables web developers to unlock a new world of possibilities. This practical book helps you take a deep dive into fundamental concepts of this JavaScript library, including JSX syntax and advanced patterns, the virtual DOM, React reconciliation, and advanced optimization techniques. By becoming fluent in React, you'll quickly learn how to build better web applications. Author Tejas Kumar helps you explore the depths of React in plain English, without the typical software engineering jargon, so you can more easily understand how this JavaScript library works. You'll learn how to write intuitive React code that fully understands the nuances and layers of React, unlocking a whole new level of fluency. You
334 pages, Paperback
Published March 19, 2024
24 people are currently reading
57 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 17, 2023
Interesting book on React and surroundings. I've learned a few good things from it, but the structure of the book as well as a few chapters are rather weird.
What I liked: In-depth review of React Fiber and reconciliation algorithm, a good overview of React internals, including a few very interesting hooks.
What I didn't like: weird chapters on frameworks and async chapter, lots of good things about React which are not all true, not cons of React, few very subjective take on how software is developed, benefits of React, and so on. Overall, I felt like the author wants to say good things when they are not true, i.e. biased statements.
Overall, good book if you want to know some React internals, but I recommend skipping few chapters
What I liked: In-depth review of React Fiber and reconciliation algorithm, a good overview of React internals, including a few very interesting hooks.
What I didn't like: weird chapters on frameworks and async chapter, lots of good things about React which are not all true, not cons of React, few very subjective take on how software is developed, benefits of React, and so on. Overall, I felt like the author wants to say good things when they are not true, i.e. biased statements.
Overall, good book if you want to know some React internals, but I recommend skipping few chapters
December 28, 2024
This is a really weird book. I wanted to learn more details about React internals, and this book does some of that. However, it’s ruined by lazy LLM generation of a large amount of the content. This makes it a horrible bore to read (“Next we’re doing to dive deep…. Now we’ll delve into the internals…. We just had a deep dive…. Let’s dive deep….” Blah blah blah…) and also reduces my trust in the content tremendously. How much of this is just an LLM summary of React that may or may not be true? I can tell in a few places where the author’s voice appears to come out. It’s not great writing when this happens and it also has a totally different tone from the other LLM-generated sections (I did verify a few sections with an LLM detector to make sure I was being fair).
Also, shame on O’Reilly for not having a good editor stop this before publication.
I love the book “Fluent Python” from the same publisher, but sadly this book isn’t in the same league. I did learn bits and pieces here and there (so I gave it a generous 2 stars instead of 1 since it’s not completely content-free) but it was pretty sparse, content-wise, and suffered greatly from having so much filler junk generated by LLMs.
Authors take note: yes we normal readers can tell when you use AI to attempt to outsource your work, and it greatly diminishes book quality. I don’t know who Tejas Kumar is, but a quick internet search mentions him giving a talk where “we will explore how to offload work to large language models and enhance productivity on a daily basis.” Think again — maybe the author should consider actually writing books himself instead of outsourcing them to robots.
P.S. After writing this review I found the author’s website. It had a section that says “I wrote a book.” But in this section he writes “It was curated by me”. That’s a strange statement but it indeed sounds more honest to say “curated” rather than “wrote”, based on by impressions and the LLM detector spot checks I made.
Also, shame on O’Reilly for not having a good editor stop this before publication.
I love the book “Fluent Python” from the same publisher, but sadly this book isn’t in the same league. I did learn bits and pieces here and there (so I gave it a generous 2 stars instead of 1 since it’s not completely content-free) but it was pretty sparse, content-wise, and suffered greatly from having so much filler junk generated by LLMs.
Authors take note: yes we normal readers can tell when you use AI to attempt to outsource your work, and it greatly diminishes book quality. I don’t know who Tejas Kumar is, but a quick internet search mentions him giving a talk where “we will explore how to offload work to large language models and enhance productivity on a daily basis.” Think again — maybe the author should consider actually writing books himself instead of outsourcing them to robots.
P.S. After writing this review I found the author’s website. It had a section that says “I wrote a book.” But in this section he writes “It was curated by me”. That’s a strange statement but it indeed sounds more honest to say “curated” rather than “wrote”, based on by impressions and the LLM detector spot checks I made.
January 8, 2024
Great book if you want to know about the internals of the React JS framework. No matter what the preface says it's not for people new to React or web frameworks.
To be fair Tejas Kumar doesn't shy away from starting from the beginning and giving as many examples as possible. But still if you want to learn React first go for a book that teaches you how to use React and then after working on it for a while DEFINITELY come back to this book. Your React journey is incomplete without this book.
To be fair Tejas Kumar doesn't shy away from starting from the beginning and giving as many examples as possible. But still if you want to learn React first go for a book that teaches you how to use React and then after working on it for a while DEFINITELY come back to this book. Your React journey is incomplete without this book.
May 13, 2024
I liked the idea and some chapters as mentioned by another reviewer. Chapters about Fiber, how it all works and RSC are interesting, I already had made my own research last year about the methods renderToString & renderToPipeableStream, so nothing new there.
It says it's not for beginners, but there's quite some beginners stuff in there as well. There might be a steep learning curve, but I expected even more comparisons with others and bigger examples toward optimizing or using React like a core contributor would. Still worth 3.5 ⭐️
It says it's not for beginners, but there's quite some beginners stuff in there as well. There might be a steep learning curve, but I expected even more comparisons with others and bigger examples toward optimizing or using React like a core contributor would. Still worth 3.5 ⭐️
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews