Chapter 1. Meeting React

This chapter covers

  • Understanding what React is
  • Solving problems with React
  • Fitting React into your web applications
  • Writing your first React app: Hello World

When I began working on web development in early 2000, all I needed was some HTML and a server-side language like Perl or PHP. Ah, the good old days of putting in alert() boxes just to debug your front-end code. It’s a fact that as the internet has evolved, the complexity of building websites has increased dramatically. Websites have become web applications with complex user interfaces, business logic, and data layers that require changes and updates over time—and often in real time.

Many JavaScript template libraries have been written to try to solve the ...

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