#w7d1

[worldsokayestmother]

W7 / D1

The fatigue is real

[greyarea89]

I shall never eat it

That curly wurly from Sam is too precious.

[psl646]

W7D1

Today I Learned: how to use React

Today we learned how to use React.

React is a JavaScript library used for building the UI. React is very efficient at updating the UI quickly and only acts on the part of the UI that has changed. This results in the absolute minimum change to the DOM. React uses a Virtual DOM (Document Object Model) that selectively renders the UI based on state changes.

After a Q&A of the React in lecture, we split up into groups to work on the projects for the day. My partner and I were able to create the following widgets: Clock, Weather, and Autocomplete.

We read up on the docs to learn the correct syntax to use in writing the JSX for the widgets. My partner and I were able to learn from each other and were able to finish all the widgets and work on using React to create a Minesweeper game.

[dylanmeacham-blog]

App Academy: Week 7, Day 1

Today we dove into creating full frontent views using React for the first time. React is a JavaScript library that serves as a framework for writing frontend views for web apps that can dynamically respond, or react (as the name implies), to user interaction. Unlike JQuery, React achieves its high reaction speed by storing a virtual DOM, in which all React components are rendered, which is then compared to the actual DOM, allowing React to change only the exact elements that need to be changed to make the actual DOM match the virtual DOM whenever the virtual DOM is changed.

Much of today focused on learning the characteristic methods of React components, such as setState, getInitialState, componentWillUnmount, and of course, render. We also learned about props, state, and ReactDOM. Within a React view, we usually have one root node in which all of our components are built within some "meta" React component. This meta component passes whatever props its children components require to them, and so on and so forth for those components and their children. Thus, we only have to render a single component with ReactDOM: the aforementioned meta component. Then, that component will cause all of its children to render, which will in turn do the same for their children, and so on and so forth. Then, whenever any of these components change, the change will be reflected in the virtual DOM, which will trigger a re-rendering of the actual DOM in only the places where there is a difference between the two.

So far, I'm having a lot of fun with React and can already see how many advantages it has over JQuery for reacting to user interaction.

[finalpen]

React? Oh my!

The pieces are finally coming together - and in a big way. Today they dropped React.js on us, and it’s even more insane and beautiful than I imagined.

We created widgets today, and I think it was the perfect demo for showcasing how dynamic and diverse you can make your web application, while keeping it very organized. My mind is brimming with ideas - I can’t wait to bring everything together and complete my final project using everything I’ve learned.

[keldonia]

Reactions abound - w7d1

Today we were introduced to the magic of React, which greatly simplifies the coding of webpages and allows for more expressive and creative control over what is ultimately rendered. We this this abiltiy today to create several small widgets and ultimately delve into the creation of minesweeper.

[ieverythingistakenup-blog]

React, JSX

Today we got started working on React. I can see its value switching from more imperative programming style to functional programming where we specify functions to be done instead. I think React makes things a lot easier by standardizing the way we add and render elements to the DOM. Using JSX also brings a more familiar HTML-like syntax to structure are Node components when rendering.

Learning new syntax and apis can be slow however. Getting familiar to how React works and getting it to do what you want sucks when you first get started.

[suntruth-blog]

W7D1

React Curriculum Day 1 Oh javascript, we barely knew you! Oh, wait, React is javascript with fancy features added on. A 'library' is how it was described to us. Basically, it optimizes the rendering of the DOM through jiggerypokery while still appearing to operate as normal. We make some widgets that wook advantage of that, and got stuck dealing with the vagaries of asynchronous callbacks and weather APIs. We spent more than 30 minutes trying to figure out why we were getting errors from an open source weather website when we were making requests. It turned out that we needed to sign up to receive a key. This info was buried in the small print at the bottom of the page...Other hijinks ensued, but when we finally got the stumbles out of the way, we were actually moving at a fairly reasonable clip. Maybe React is right for me! (We'll see.)