This review reflects my recent experience with the Udemy course joined by 101.000+ other students, The Complete React Native + Hooks Course [2020 Edition], by Stephen Grider. The course aims to teach React Native through Hooks, Context, and React Navigation.
Setup is treated with great care A nice intro to Flexbox and Redux A guide to reuse components Codes are explained thoroughly |
Uses React Native Router Flux Doesn’t include Publishing applications |
Rating:
Overview
React Native is an excellent solution for developing apps on mobile devices. It takes the same amount of time as when making an equivalent iOS or Swift app. But, with React Native, you’ll get to the changes instantly on your device, rather than waiting for Swift/Java code to recompile.
This quick feedback loop, along with excellent cross-platform support of React Native got me captivated. So, I set out a search for a Udemy course that gets me up and running quickly with React Native.
That’s when I run into The Complete React Native + Hooks Course [2020 Edition] by Stephen Grider, the main subject of this review. With 101.000+ students, it seems to be a popular React course on Udemy. I went with it. And, the course turns out to be one of the best learning decisions I’ve ever made.
The name used to be The Complete React Native and Redux Course. It has recently been changed to The Complete React Native + Hooks Course [2020 Edition]. Some of the course content has been altered as well.
Meet the Instructor
Before digging into the details of the review, let me introduce the main instructor of The Complete React Native + Hooks Course [2020 Edition].
Stephen Grider
As an Engineering Architect, Stephen Grider‘s main job is to build complex Javascript front ends. His partners are top corporations in the San Francisco Bay Area. Stephen has an innate ability to make complex topics easier to understand. That gift has been shining through his online courses. As he once shared on his Udemy profile, he sees teaching as a way to “share the knowledge I’ve gained with other software engineers.” Stephen is also running a website called RallyCoding, which shows case his best courses and blog posts.
At First Glance
Target Audience
As I’m completely new to React Native, I was worried going into the course. I wondered if I was the right audience. The title shows no sign of who the course targets. The description isn’t much of a help either. It simply says:
This course is for anyone looking to make native apps with React Native
You will notice later in my review for The Complete React Native + Hooks Course [2020 Edition], the course starts from the basics. It progresses from setting up a React Native development environment to initializing your first project.
So, yeah, you need no previous React Native knowledge although a little exposure to React wouldn’t hurt anyone.
However, having finished the course, I do feel that some JavaScript knowledge is necessary. Without it, it can be hard to understand what’s going on.
Course Content
The Complete React Native + Hooks Course [2020 Edition] is
1 Set up
This course requires quite a lot of setups. Luckily, we won’t be doing them on our own. Stephen will lead students through each process.
- React Native
The Complete React Native + Hooks Course [2020 Edition] is one of a few courses that go into detail on setting up the development environment. Here Stephen covers both OSX and Windows set up. So, unless you run on Linux, you’ll be okay no matter what operating system you choose. However, since Linux is Unix-like, you can make use of some of the OSX setups. - ES Lint
ES Lint setup is also well taken care of. ES Lint is a vital development tool that makes its appearance in almost every serious project you’ll ever work with. Therefore, it’s a bonus point for this course for letting students have an idea about what ES Lint is and how to set it up. Stephen diligently avoids the text-editors wars by showing the three most used text editors (VS Code, Atom, and Sublime).
2 React
The name of the course is The Complete React Native + Hooks Course [2020 Edition]. It would be quite disappointing to not have a decent amount of React on the course content. Stephen tries his best to explain important React concepts like components, prop types, and rendering.
3 FlexBox
Styling is an unignorable part in the development of mobile applications. Get the styling well and you’ll see changes in users’ reaction. Flexbox is an excellent tool for UI designs on mobile. It works especially well for React Native.
The course looks into major properties of Flexbox such as flex, justifyContent, alignItems, and flexDirection. It also covers how these properties can affect the positioning of elements on mobile when set to different values.
4 User Input
A good application, especially in mobile devices, requires a lot of user input. This user input can be achieved through gestures, taps, or keyboards, which is different from that an input from web-based applications. As a result, mobile inputs shouldn’t be built the same way as web-based inputs. This online class shows you how to build and style your inputs for native mobile applications.
5 FireBase
The course gets you started with FireBase through signing up, setting up a new FireBase project, and setting up FireBase for your React Native project. If you’re wondering what FireBase is, it’s a wonderful platform to use in your applications. It works on iOS, Android, and web to provide automatic data synchronization, authentication services, messaging, file storage, analytics, and much more.
However, you won’t get to learn all the amazing features of FireBase. The course will only touch on authentication using FireBase. You will need to get the plentiful information on FireBase through other resources and courses. The FireBase docs are a terrific place to start.
6 Redux
Redux is an integral library of front end applications. It provides an easy way to centralize the state of your application. This library is quite confusing. Knowing that, Stephen tries his best to simplify the knowledge. He tackles reducers and actions separately, explaining how each of them works and interacts with each other. His aim is to “master the confusing terminologies and put plain English definitions to all different parts of the library.”
The course has been heavily edited around May 2019. Some of the main content has been taken off the course, Redux included.
7 Navigation
Navigation is another central part of a mobile application. An application is rarely made up of one single screen. Instead, it’s a combination of screens. Therefore, it requires a smooth transition between those screens, which is known as a navigator.
Though important, navigation is a tricky topic and a difficult concept to get through. Stephen once shares that Navigation is one of the topics that just can’t be explained using words and diagrams. Students need to actually build an application to experience and understand it.
Throughout the course, you’ll notice the utmost importance of navigation to React Native. The class uses React Native Router Flux to perform Navigation. However, this library is not the best option for navigation. I’ll talk more about this later.
What Makes the Course Amazing
The Complete React Native + Hooks Course [2020 Edition] gets a pretty high rating (4.6/5) in the course review. The one-star rating is only around 1%, which is considerably low.
Now, let’s see what impresses me about the course.
First and foremost, Stephen Grider takes great time to help students setup.
Many courses overlook the setup phase and assume students can do so on their own. In fact, most of them just provide links to the setup documentation. This course takes a different alternative. It guides users through the important step of setting up on different platforms to ensure they understand and can get started successfully, irrespective of their choice of platform.
Two major setups you’ll go through in this course are React Native setup and ES Lint, which I’ve already mentioned in the Course Content section above.
FlexBox and Redux are introduced thoroughly.
As mentioned earlier, FlexBox brings a winning advantage to UI designs on mobile, especially to React Native. This, in essence, makes FlexBox a core part of React Native. With such importance, any React Native course would not be complete without the mention of FlexBox.
Redux is another integral project for an application. It is a pretty important library, especially when building front end applications. As your application grows, there is a need to have a robust state management system, which Redux does superbly.
This course makes sure learners get the best grasp on the concept of Flexbox and Redux and implement nice interfaces using those features.
Components can be reused.
Reusing components is an essential part of developing an application using React, as well as other frameworks. Imagine having to write one code for a hundred times when creating an application. You wouldn’t want to do that, right?
That’s why people reuse components. So, they don’t have to write the same code over and over again.
A bonus point of this course is that Stephen shows how to use props to write components that can be re-used later on.
Codes are thoroughly explained.
It’s pretty common for online tutorials to just show the surface of the code without any explanation whatsoever. It’s like the frustrating setup phase again. You’ll get all the steps but you won’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Fortunately, this course is the opposite. The instructor takes time to explain each library/dependency, every command you will run, and every bit of code you will write. He has stayed true to his principal.
I am a big believer of understanding every last cut line of code that gets written.
Stephen Grider
What’s Missing
The course has actually exceeded my expectations, given that the number of enrollments is quite low compared to other hit courses. However, no matter how great a class is, there are still things that bring it down a notch.
In this review for The Complete React Native + Hooks Course [2020 Edition], I’ll be mentioning two of its downsides.
The first one is about Navigation.
Navigation is one of the main parts of The Complete React Native + Hooks Course [2020 Edition]. Stephen Grider has done a pretty good job introducing and explaining the concepts on navigation in React Native.
Unfortunately, he’s chosen React Native Router Flux. React Native Router Flux is not a bad option. In fact, it’s a popular navigation library. However, it’s not the most popular.
The most popular one would be React Navigation. It’s much more superior than the others and is currently recommended by React Native docs.
The possible explanation of why Stephen sticks with React Native Router Flux is because it was the most viable option at the creation of this course. As time passes, I hope the instructor will consider changing the navigation library to React Navigation.
The second drawback is that the course doesn’t mention Publishing.
The title of the course is The Complete React Native + Hooks Course [2020 Edition]. Yet, it misses one important feature of React Native: Publishing applications.
Stephen Grider has left out Publishing Applications, which I personally feel to be one essential and challenging part of React Native. It would have been wonderful if the course had offered a detailed explanation for publishing in either the Google Play Store or Apple App Store.
One more thing that bumps me out is that Stephen has taken Redux off the course.
The Complete React Native + Hooks Course [2020 Edition] used to be The Complete React Native and Redux Course. Now, Redux has been taken off the table.
The instructor has decided to separate Redux into another course. Though this may be a good decision, I still feel cheated. Redux was one of the reasons I enrolled in the course in the first place.
Final Words
Like anything else, the course is not entirely complete. There are times when you have to check out other resources for publishing, FireBase, and FlexBox to be able to smoothly go from getting started to publishing your app on App Store or Play Store.
However, Stephen has tried his best to make sure students understand all the code important concepts for developing React Native applications. In short, The Complete React Native + Hooks Course [2020 Edition] is a great way to get started with React Native or if you want to brush up on related topics.
Hope that you’ve found my review about The Complete React Native + Hooks Course [2020 Edition] on Udemy helpful.