Take your React beyond the tutorial

React is here to stay. It solves many problems you may not even know existed. These essays are the good stuff I learned over the years.

Learning from tutorials is easy. You follow some steps, learn a smol lesson, and feel like you got dis ๐Ÿ’ช

Then comes the interview, a real world problem, or a question from the boss. Your mind goes blank. Shit, how does this work again ...

Happens to everyone. Building is harder than recognizing and the real world is a mess! Nothing fits in neat little boxes you learned about in tutorials.

That's where my emails come in โ€“ lessons from experience. Building production software :)

Leave your email and get the React email Series - a series of curated essays on building with React. Borne from experience, seasoned with over 12+ years of hands-on practice building the engineering side of growing SaaS companies.

Latest React articles from Swizec

12 articles from 2020 ยท show all

November 2020

SSR, SSRwR, SSG, CSR, WTFBBQ???

These abbreviations are getting out of hand. It's like a bad interviewer's wet dream.

Gatsby to NextJS pt1, server-side-render or server-side-generate?

Gatsby and NextJS do similar things differently. One is better for websites, the other for webapps. In episode 17 of CodeWithSwiz we explore the biggest difference.

October 2020

Refactoring a useReducer to XState, pt1 โ€“ CodeWithSwiz 11

XState promises to be like useReducer+Context combined and the simplest way to handle complex state in React apps. But can it deliver? On this episode of #CodeWithSwiz, we gave it a shot.

September 2020

Prefetch data with React Query and NextJS โ€“ CodeWithSwiz 8, 9

Prefetching lets you start React apps without loading spinners. Gatsby introduced this concept with `staticQuery`, react-query and NextJS make the pattern easier ๐Ÿ˜

Using JavaScript to commit to Github โ€“ CodeWithSwiz 7

Update code with a JavaScript function? Easier than you think ๐Ÿ˜

Why NextJS /api routes are fab โ€“ CodeWithSwiz 6

In this episode of CodeWithSwiz, we tried NextJS's support for /api routes โ€“ code running on the backend. In a word โ€“ Wow

How React Query gives you almost everything you thought you needed GraphQL for

GraphQL solves every problem you've ever had talking to APIs on the frontend. Mention a switch to GraphQL to your team and they think it's a joke. Rewrite our entire app? oh you jokester. React Query is the perfect middle ground โค๏ธ

August 2020

Lessons from migrating a 14 year old blog with 1500 posts to Gatsby

After 4 years of putting it off, 1 year of tinkering, a month of work, and $1500 of hired help, my new blog is finally here ๐ŸŽ‰ Here's what I learned.

When your brain is breaking, try XState

Why react-hook-form is my new favorite form library

June 2020

Wormhole state management

April 2020

Why you should build a form generator

Lemme guess, every project involves 1 or 2 forms and they're all the friggen same. You got forms coming out the wazoo. Render fields. Connect to state. Add field validation. Detect submit. Add form validation. Send fetch request. Repeat.