Users tend to grasp React easily when they have experience with JavaScript. If you are new to programming, then learning React would be challenging. Educative offers a variety of courses including “JavaScript Fundamentals Before Learning React” to help you easily learn React.
How to start React for beginners?
11 mins read
Oct 31, 2025
Share
Content
React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. React is a popular, easy to learn tool, that’s designed to work everywhere. With some basic web development skills – like JavaScript, HMTL, and CSS, you can build professional looking, slick UIs quickly and easily.
Today, we’ll help you get started with React by comparing native and hybrid apps and exploring some basic syntax.
Pick up React in half the time
Learn to make industry-ready React apps with hands-on practice and live projects.
React for Front-End Developers
Intro to Web Application Development#
Web apps are software developed to display web pages in a browser. The most basic techstack is JavaScript, HTML, CSS. Here’s a quick breakdown of how these three technologies are used:
Web application basic tech stack is:
- HTML
- DOM – Document Object Model
- For structure of web page
- CSS
- For styling
- JavaScript
- For programming
- Grabbing data from a server, processing inputs, generating outputs
- Web pages are served up by a server, and then modified by the browser using JavaScript.
These tech stacks that developers use to build web applications are often called Web Frameworks or Web Application Frameworks. React.js is a modern framework for JavaScript. Adding React to the basic HTML/CSS/JavaScript stack makes it a lot easier to make more robust user interfaces.
In web app development, you -the developer - has to worry about:
- browser compatibility
- extensions
- Speed
- Security
- Web Protocols – HTTP
- Browser’s architecture rules
Within your web app, you’ll also have tiers which is explained below.
Web Application Tiers#
For this quick overview, we’ll just assume a 3-tiered architecture: browser, engine, database.
What are tiers? Applications are segmented into logical chunks called tiers. The three-tiered application is the most common structure – that’s what’s diagrammed above. React is a library that deals with the web browser level, as React is a library for creating UIs. Here’s how the web application uses 3-tiered architecture to update a web page:
Native Apps#
The easiest example of native apps to understand when you’re new to software development are mobile apps for your cell phone. Mobile apps are the ones you use on your phone everyday – like Instagram or Spotify. Mobile apps come in two development styles:
-
Native
- Native is built for one specific Operating System (OS)
-
Hybrid
- Built to run anywhere
What is native app development?
To shortcut: native app development is usually building apps for iPhone or Android Phones.
Native app development is the creation of software programs that run on specific devices and platforms. You can build native apps for desktops, smart TVs, and all kinds of gadgets. Smartphones are the most popular native mobile app development platforms. Companies build operating systems for developers to build apps for their devices – this gives developers access to tools & features on that device – like a camera on a phone. Specifically, the two most popular mobile OS are:
- Google’s Android
- Apple’s iOS
Native mobile apps don’t run in the browser – unlike web applications which are built for browsers. As a user, you download native mobile apps from platform-specific stores like Apple’s App Store or Google Play.
This means as a developer building native apps, you don’t have to worry about browser compatibility, but you do have to worry about the compatibility of your native app’s Operating System. The huge benefit to Native Apps are getting free access to tools & features in that Operating System!
Native App Development Advantages#
-
Use Device Features & Tools
- Example: Your phone’s camera
-
Faster
- Native apps are optimized for that specific Operating System, that specific device.
-
Compliant
- Native apps are built with the security & programming requirements of the native operating system in mind. So, native apps are less likely to break when the manufacturer of the OS puts out an update – because presumably, native developers have built to that Operating System’s specs & strengths.
-
Secure
- Can use built in security features to verify a user is logged in, for example Face ID on an iPhone
- Native apps can often access the devices 2 Factor Authentication method, like getting a code texted to your phone, and having the code auto-populate in the app.
Keep the learning going.#
Learn React without scrubbing through videos or documentation. Educative’s text-based courses are easy to skim and feature live coding environments - making learning quick and efficient.
Hybrid Apps#
Hybrid apps are built to run everywhere. Hybrid apps work as both web apps and native mobile apps. Hybrid apps are developed to be compatible with different browsers and operating systems.
You build hybrid apps using web technologies: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but the developer has to be very careful selecting a tech stack on top of that. Many features from different code libraries or tools only work with certain browsers or operating systems.
React’s platform versatility makes it a favorite for bypassing these problems.
Hybrid Apps are:
- Portable
- Simple Development
- Run on different browsers, Operating Systems
What are the downsides to hybrid apps?
-
Loss of speed
- Native apps are optimized to that specific Operating System. Hybrid apps have to be designed to work everywhere.
-
Limited tech tooling
- There’s a lot of languages, code libraries, and packages for specific situations that won’t work everywhere. As a developer, you’ve got to be very careful picking a techstack when designing hybrid.
-
Code duplication/complication
- Some things in your app have to be written to handle different cases on browsers vs. native Operating Systems
-
Loss of powerful features
- There’s great features on your smartphone – like your camera. My iPhone has live photos, filters, and panorama. Coding a hybrid app you’ve got to dumb down the design a little bit to ensure it’s compatible everywhere.
React Tutorial - A step-by-step walkthrough#
Here we’ll demonstrate a simple React component to get you started learning React.
Note about Developer ToolChains:
Tool Chains are the set of software used to implement development into production software. For the most part, when coding for a company you’ll be working with a long existing toolchain.
For this 101, we’re going to add React as a plain script tag on an HTML page. React as a plain scriptag skips a lot of complicated toolchain info.
React as a Script Tag#
Here’s a 101 to build a button using React.
- Add a title in HTML
- Readability is a huge part of good code so put in a title!
- Add a DOM container to the HTML web page inside the body
- Add
<body></body>tags - Inside the body, add
<div id="click_button_container"></div> - Note: There can be multiple DOM containers in the HTML.
- DOM containers act independently from other containers, but usually for React centric apps, there’s only one DOM container
- Containers are empty: React replaces existing content inside DOM containers
- Add
-
Script Tags
- Add 3 script tags after the DOM container, right before
</body>end tag - These tags Load React, then loads component code
- Add 3 script tags after the DOM container, right before
-
Create a React Component in JavaScript
- JavaScript code defines the React Component
- In the JavaScript section of our codebase, enter in the following code:
-
The code you entered in:
- Creates a new React element
- Creates a class called
ClickButtonwhich extends React.Component - Click button initializes a state variable called “clicked” to
false
-
Now we’ve got the structure defined in HTML, the empty
click_button_containerHTML root node ready for something to populate it. We’ve also got theClickButtonclass in JavaScript defining the logic of our button component. The next step, is torender()theClickButtonlogic into theclick_button_container.- Add this code to the bottom of the JavaScript file, which will render the
ClickButtonlogic into theclick_button_container.
- Add this code to the bottom of the JavaScript file, which will render the
- Now you can see “Click Button” on the right hand side. go ahead and click that and see what happens.
You’ve created a React component! Congratulations! There’s a lot more to learn about React. Below we’ve got some syntax background explanation about the code you created.
React Syntax#
There’s a lot more about React syntax on the React page, but let’s go over the very basic basics of the button we just built:
- React is Component Based
- Elements
Render()method- Stateful Component
Component Based#
React is component based. What are components? Components are small, isolated pieces of code that the developer uses to build UIs. The best thing about components, are they are reusable.
Examples of React Components:
- Button we just built
What do React components do?
- Takes in props
- Properties, parameters passed into the component
- Returns display
- Hierarchy of views
- Via
render()method
Elements#
Elements are a lightweight description of what to render. Elements are our first building block of learning React syntax – elements describe what you see on the screen.
From our code example, here’s how React interacts from create an Element in JavaScript, creating a root DOM node in HTML, and using the render() method to put the logic from the element to display on the webpage.
What is render?#
The render() method returns a description of what to display on the screen. Render() returns a React element – remember a React element is a lightweight description of what to render().
Stateful Component#
How does the browser know when to re-render a page? When the state of the component changes. A component maintains internal state data (this.state), as seen in our ClickButton example class where this.state = { clicked: false }.
When this.state changes, the render() method is re-invoked, and the rendered markup is updated with the latest information. In our example, when this.state.clicked changes to True, the button disappears, and a “You clicked this” method shows instead.
Setting up a React project the modern way#
Gone are the days of including React with a simple <script> tag. Modern React apps are built with powerful developer tools that make your life easier from day one. There are two popular ways to get started:
Single-page app (SPA) approach#
Use a fast, lightweight build tool like Vite. You can start a project with:
npm create vite@latest my-app --template reactcd my-appnpm installnpm run dev
Full-stack approach#
Use a React framework like Next.js that handles routing, server-side rendering (SSR), and API routes out of the box:
npx create-next-app@latest
Both approaches give you a modern development setup, with built-in optimizations, fast refresh, and better scalability compared to older script-based setups.
Functional components and Hooks: The new React mindset#
React has evolved, and today’s best practice is to use functional components with Hooks instead of class components. Hooks make state management, side effects, and reactivity much simpler and more readable.
Here’s the modern version of the classic counter example:
import { useState } from "react";import { createRoot } from "react-dom/client";function ClickButton() {const [count, setCount] = useState(0);return (<button onClick={() => setCount(count + 1)}>You clicked {count} times</button>);}const root = createRoot(document.getElementById("root"));root.render(<ClickButton />);
Hooks like useState and useEffect are the foundation of modern React. They let you build powerful, reusable logic without complex class hierarchies or lifecycle methods.
What’s new in React 19#
React continues to evolve, and React 19 introduces features that simplify development and improve performance:
use hook – Makes asynchronous data fetching inside components much easier.
Document Metadata – Set titles and meta tags directly in components for better SEO and DX.
Server Functions – New terminology and tools for running server-side logic from client components.
Improved Web Component support – More reliable event handling and interoperability with web components.
Understanding these features will help you write cleaner, more future-proof React code.
Client and server components: A new mental model#
Modern React isn’t just about building UIs in the browser. With frameworks like Next.js, you can split your app into Server Components (which run on the server) and Client Components (which run in the browser).
Server Components – Fetch data, access databases, and handle heavy logic. They never ship JavaScript to the client.
Client Components – Handle interactivity, events, and user interactions.
This model leads to faster apps with smaller bundles and better performance — and it’s how many production-grade React apps are built today.
Data fetching and state management in React#
React now encourages suspense-friendly approaches to data fetching. Instead of manually handling loading states everywhere, you can use libraries that integrate smoothly with React’s rendering model.
Popular choices:#
TanStack Query (React Query): Powerful client-side caching and data synchronization.
SWR: Lightweight data fetching with caching and revalidation.
Next.js App Router + use: Simplified async data fetching built into the framework.
When combined with hooks, these tools make building data-driven apps more predictable and performant.
Tooling and best practices for React projects#
A big part of working with React today is having the right tools in your toolkit. Here’s what most professional projects use:
TypeScript: Adds static typing to catch bugs early and improve code quality.
ESLint & Prettier: Automate code formatting and linting for consistent style.
React Testing Library & Vitest/Jest: Ensure components work as expected through tests.
Git + CI/CD: Automate deployments and maintain reliability as your app grows.
Even small projects benefit from adopting these practices early — they’ll save hours of debugging and refactoring later.
Next Steps#
Congratulations! You’ve made it through a React intro! There’s more to learn. The next steps include:
- JSX
- Toolchains
- State vs. Props
- Props are immutable
- Component API
- Forms
- Events
For a complete course on learning how to use React, you can check out, React for Front-End Developers. In this Path, you will learn all the fundamentals you need to become a successful React developer. Afterward, you will be prepared to build your own applications and have projects for your portfolio.
Continue reading about React#
Frequently Asked Questions
Is React coding hard?
Is React coding hard?
Written By:
Erin Doherty
