How to Get Started with React as a Junior Developer

When you're a junior developer, React can feel like standing at the base of a mountain and looking up. There's so much to learn — components, state, props, hooks, the ecosystem — that it's easy to spend weeks reading docs and watching tutorials without writing a single real line of code.

At Junior Mentor, we've seen hundreds of students go through this. The ones who break through fastest share one habit: they start building on day one, even when they don't fully understand what they're doing.

Step 1: Don't start with Create React App

Create React App is deprecated and slow. Start with Vite instead — it's what professionals use and what we teach at Junior Mentor. Run this in your terminal:

• ✓npm create vite@latest my-app -- --template react-ts
• ✓cd my-app && npm install
• ✓npm run dev

You now have a React app running locally. That took 60 seconds. Now let's build something in it.

Step 2: Build something real in week one

Skip the counter app. Build a portfolio page for yourself. It has a clear goal, it'll be on your CV, and it forces you to learn layout, components, and props in one project.

"The fastest way to learn React is to ship something — even something broken. Broken code teaches you more than perfect tutorials."

Step 3: Understand what a component actually is

A React component is just a JavaScript function that returns JSX (HTML-like syntax). That's it. The complexity comes later when you add state and side effects. But at its core, it's a function that renders UI.

Step 4: Learn hooks in this order

Hooks are React's way of adding behaviour to components. Learn them in this sequence — rushing ahead skips important mental models:

• ✓useState — for data that changes over time
• ✓useEffect — for side effects (fetching, timers)
• ✓useRef — for DOM access and mutable values
• ✓useContext — for shared state across components
• ✓Custom hooks — combine the above for reusable logic

Step 5: Get a code review

This is where most self-taught developers stall. Writing code alone means you never discover bad habits until they cause bugs in production. At Junior Mentor, every project gets a senior mentor review before sign-off. If you're learning alone, find a community, open a PR on GitHub, or post your code on the SA dev Discord.