Using ES6 and React

One of the new, hot libraries in the JavaScript world is React and there is reason that it is getting so much attention: it offers some productivity gains you will not believe. In this workshop, we will cover React at a high level and then get in and write some code.

React is a library that totally eschews the traditional model-view-controller architecture in favor of consolidating all concerns of a component into a single location. This may seem to be a bad idea but it actually makes code very easy to read and maintain. This is, however, a break from the way we typically think. We will go over this new line of thinking, complete with little React examples to toy with.

By the end of this workshop, you will understand:

• React, its purpose, and why you may want to use it
• How to bootstrap a new app and get React working for you
• The complete lifecycle of a React component
• Some battle-won React best practices as a result of having React code in production
• This weird, cool, new JavaScript dialect called JSX
• Have built several complete React components, including a little app

The very talented Marshall Upshur will be TA'ing the class.