The Average React Developer

[@robmorgan1214]

Man, I really like young primagen! The old man's stash is so legendary it had to be continued on the next developer!!! Looks good theo.

[@t3dotgg]

I wear a tshirt ONE TIME...

[@succatash]

Need a hoodie

[@Sprisa]

@@t3dotggwear it more

[@flamakespark]

Hey guess what the name... ...is TheTheoAgen

[@adrianorocha-dev]

The youngagen

[@knevari3952]

I really needed to hear this. I was starting to get tired of doubting myself everyday and feeling like shit because I’m not good enough, reading articles, building projects and trying my best to learn new stuff and still feeling like I’m always behind. Thank you so much

[@Bobab0y]

Lmao this how i feel right now in this very moment. even thought i’ve built projects and working with react now , I just see new things like remix or different ways “better” developers do things and it makes me wanna just keep restarting but boy am i never gonna get off this start line 😂

[@codeiseasy19]

I built successful businesses from react website, and still felt that guys who are working in top startups are better than me. I just realised I am doing good😅

[@gabrielbianchi2246]

Yesterday I had a big breakdown questioning my skills. This video definitely came at the right time. Thank you Theo. I watch all of your videos and I think this might mean I’m not “average”

[@_Aarius_]

Im a primarily back-end dev on an site that uses an angular frontend and ive never used react, personally, but a portion of this really resonated: in previous jobs, i was solving tickets or implementing a particular feature, and unless the tech we were using taught me about a feature when i googled "why does happen when in library " or "how to in ", then i wouldnt know it. Even though i am an enthusiast, in my own time i live in cli, server, and low level stuff. There are ca lot of places to be enthusiastic, and not all of them are the front end. the points in this video are good, but they aren't just applicable to react - they apply to any industry norm / mature / common technologies

[@jackson-gabbard]

Thank you for this video. I run an engineering team of ex-Facebook, ex-Google, and ex-Microsoft folks among many other folks who are bootcamp grads who happen to be extraordinarily talented. I love my team. I'm proud of them. And they struggle to imagine the 'average'. This video is so relevant to us. Thank you.

[@javierneri81]

No, please don't say that I'm not the average React dev. That's my only excuse for having poor code.

[@tokiomutex4148]

Henceforth you shall be known as an enthusiastic React Andy

[@nezukovlogs1122]

I actually agree with you on first part of twch twitter group, i learn so much from these people especially people like Theo, Prime, Trash, Warren, Melkey, Emiko, Average Engineer, jlarky and so many others who are causally talks about sometimes in memes also the best concepts of JS and react which normally people don;t know about

[@grug_smash_keyboard]

I felt the exact same way when I watched the Primeagan's Sturgeon law take. Just like how having $5.3k in your bank account puts you on the right side of the median US household in terms of saving account balance, devs who spend time outside work to understand tech and play with other technologies aside from their work stack probably belong in the top quartile in terms of developer quality. Just being where you are can cloud you from what's really happening.

[@Dozer456123]

I don’t think spending time outside of work puts you in any special groups I know a bunch of devs that are interested in what they work on outside of work and are still bad at it.

[@amyblankenship3483]

@@Dozer456123 That means that there are people out there that are even way worse than that.

[@shantanukulkarni007]

I work in a company where frontend was made by very average unenthusiastic backend developers and boy you should see the codebase. Ejected cra with class and functional components mixed. Some components have 8 to 10 useffects with 4 useffects have no dependency. 3 different types of UI libraries to create buttons,modals and table... And jQuery littered like rabbit shit all over the place. I am the solo frontend developer left after a massive layoff and it my job to bring this codebase to some standards.

[@benzouuuu]

Omg what a nightmare. Stay strong

[@shantanukulkarni007]

I won't say nightmare. Pay is extremely good and since the company is mainly backend focused there is hardly any frontend job. So I get paid to learn all new libraries and implement them in the most performance way. It's very good for my career. In one year I have mastered react like a top end frontend developer

[@berrywarmer11]

@@shantanukulkarni007 good for you for keeping a positive attitude about it! It sounds like something that a lot of folks (myself included) would be very stressed out about. Also, I'm glad it sounds like you have no oversight for this, that's probably the key to letting you iterate. Get things wrong one day, get it right another day, and have the freedom to stop what you're doing and go back & clean up behind yourself instead of churning out yet another pointless feature!

[@shantanukulkarni007]

@@berrywarmer11 Yeah. The code i wrote last year was such a trash, I was still learning react and just made a mess but because no one in my company knows react that well, it got approved to production. I am cleaning that mess now. We released 2 features from frontend side since last year. Rest of the time I do maintenance.

[@parassharma7041]

​@@shantanukulkarni007 hi brother I'm little weak in css but my react part is strong like state management, although I'm full stack developer, how can i get better into css Or i should stop focusing on css?

[@atalha96]

It should also be noted that your viewers aren't just average React devs as you're not an average KZbinr - you're a React psychologist and a superb KZbinr!🚀

[@joaoalpoim2763]

Hey Theo, just wanted to say I appreciate this kind of videos a lot. I saw your video "Your Goals Kinda Suck - LEVEL UP As A Developer " a year ago and it was such a slap in the face. I now send that video to all my coworkers everytime we have a conversation around this topic. I was following the behaviours you describe in the video and wondered why I felt unfulfilled and unhappy in life. That was a click for me, and even though I might not be as much as an enthusiast and will never get to your level in programming, I now have a clear direction. I dont want to just change jobs for the money anymore, I want to learn and contribute and help make a better product. Thank you and keep up the good work

[@UwU-dx5hu]

This is a beautiful video. I love technology and watch tech videos while eating... Finally i feel recognized!

[@penguindrummaster]

This statement is so true for so many aspects of programming. I still have a hard time understanding that my peers aren't my equals. Let me rephrase that: they aren't me. I have a desire to learn the minute details of this field, but that's not the common thread. There are people I look up to for their talents and knowledge, but it doesn't mean that they are as interested in getting better. A person's growth and interests are highly individual, and you shouldn't think less of them because they aren't as invested as you. Great video.

[@nonlinearsound-001]

To me, with all those years of developing software, starting in Assembler and C, building a tech stack by myself over and over again until the age of frameworks and prebuilt tech stacks it feels strange that there are developers who don’t really understand and care for the tools they are using as developing software turned into a 9 to 5 labor thing instead of our hobby as a job experience.

[@FilipCodes]

Could watch 10 hours of you just breaking react apart and going in on all the little details. ❤

[@JasonSilvis-g9v]

Hello Thanks for the information. I became a developer because i felt something was up with my body so i wanted a less physically demanding job. Turns out there was something wrong and that step was vital. Problem is im not enjoying my current position because they do not utilize the tools i enjoy using so in my downtime i try to hone them. I am a little nervous to apply to positions now because im rusty and have a disability that severly impacts me. This video lifted up my spirit. Thank you. For the people here. Don't let anything or anyone stop you from your dreams.

[@xantanfasteros]

Nice! I loved it. I dont remember where i found your content, perhaps on twitch or yt but definitely not twitter since i dont use it. React enthusiast here. Keep up the good work!

[@Khigha87]

I appreciate your videos so much Theo! Quality content with the perfect balance between education and personality. Keep it up broski!

[@tarek900045]

Needed that intro alot you dont know how much

[@drevan1138]

It is the thing that I picked in 2014 (or maybe 2015, who remembers) at a company of 1,000 that got acquired by a big tech company with 27,000 employees. I’ve initialized over 100 React projects and I now feel stuck in the giant ecosystem I helped create. I’d love to pivot to Solid or HTMX, but we’d have to rewrite so much…

[@seanmcgrady8688]

I'm building an RPG with React. I've come to love it because of this project.

[@johngagon]

I live two lives: working on flux React by day. Trying to poc new stuff on my own at night. I came from a Java, then groovy Grails which was extremely easy. T3 reminds me of that same easy of development. (a far cry from Rust (try zig instead)). React is one tech that is good at one typical problem: web apps. What's interesting is that we've come full circle from server apps to SPAs back to server, (but better), with next. A lifelong developer knows to keep an ear to the ground if they're going to be asked to switch. Sometimes we get jaded by tech churn, Moore's law. But with that is a drive to get back to the original love we had with development which involves learning the cool shortcuts out there. Type safety is a real problem at work. Type Error replacing NullPointerException almost had me jaded. Thanks for resparking the fire and yes, it's made me an enthusiast again like when I was part of a user group/conference goer.

[@darialyphia]

« Half of people are dumber than that person » damn feels good to be seen

[@alibahrami6810]

Outstanding perspective and line of reasoning here!

[@EvilTim1911]

This is EXACTLY the kind of guy I'm stuck working with closely at my job right now. It's honestly frustrating when you see someone has zero drive to learn and expand their skills and no curiosity about how stuff works. That's how you get people with 5-10 years of experience who are still juniors in terms of their actual skillset.

[@universe_decoded797]

I’m a free agent

[@Fernando-ry5qt]

Yeah well..... the thing is that you will sooner than later crush them in performance and scale up in positions due to that, it is just natural and it is ok You will lead a lot of people like that and you will need that knowledge to take the correct decisions for them, so they can code without much thinking and still achieve great results. Don't get frustrated, keep going, you will eventually shine.

[@rand0mtv660]

@@Fernando-ry5qt it's mentally draining when you are surrounded with people like that, at least to me. Before I thought all developers are enthusiasts and highly motivated, but now after programming for some time I kinda realized that it's not like that, not even close. Yeah it gets demotivating, but pushing through pays off in multiple ways.

[@Fernando-ry5qt]

@@rand0mtv660 yeah, it leads to burnout more often than not. But so is life

[@EvilTim1911]

@wesborland3381 It's fine to see it as such, but this colleague in question doesn't even reach the bare minimum of what's expected from someone with several years of experience. I'm still returning PRs for indentations that are all over the place, so don't get me started on the more serious issues. The guy has almost 5 years of experience at this point and I've seen juniors with 5 months of experience who produce much better code. You don't necessarily need to strive to be the best of the best, but at one point this mindset of being happy with your stagnating skills hurts your career and the project you're on

[@TheIpicon]

Came here, got my compliments for watching this video on an off weekend. will com here tomorrow ;)

[@alanscodelog]

I think react was miles ahead of the competition when it was created and so was very widely adopted. The jquery of its day. Otherwise in comparison to other frameworks its approach is currently outdated, but only a bit, its not worth it to rewrite these projects. Otherwise the approaches other frameworks are taking make much more sense. React devs may complain about their magic but react does a different type of imo harder to understand magic. Having said thats it's obvious we'll all get dissatisfied eventually. That's natursl amd that's how get progress.

[@alamandrax]

I remember giving this exact speech to one of my colleagues a few years ago over lunch. Dude spent a few more months in our organization and then quit to join the clergy. fun times.

[@ruudlaff10]

Couldn’t agree more with all of this. One aside to this is that it’s incredibly hard to have empathy for the average dev that may be less motivated and/or skilled. And we should. I struggle with it a lot.

[@ShlomiLevi972]

Yes, I agree with you. It's not just a React developer it's also an Angular developer in general it's an average developer. they do not read the docs, they are not open to new ideas and they don't care about the code and how things should be done

[@TrilinistyGaming]

This is honestly so real, I have friends who use react but really don’t care too much for it.

[@cloynelson2974]

OK, but how are those people are even landing jobs?

[@WomboBraker]

This is nice to hear, always fighting with self doubt

[@NiceChange]

Great video. Goes to the art of the matter. It's like when I realized how fast my projects changed pages when I dove in to react router..it's the little things that can make a big impact...cheers..😊

[@animanaut]

consider youself lucky if you are in a greenfield project, because you get to make all the errors yourself. usually in a legacy project you get to complain about someone elses bad decisions. if you stay long enough in your greenfield project you will see it being transformed into a legacy project. huge lesson to be learned there

[@AnsisPlepis]

awesome video. never really thought about average devs like this

[@sehoonah7756]

You are an amazing person Theo thank you for all the time and effort you put into this content!

[@superchillh3o]

Man, this really encouraging.

[@niomeda]

Great video, but there is a third category too. What about me? A Java dev who watches these videos and almost never writes react code 😊

[@abdulazizaskaraliev6119]

Ohh, I have been wating you and prime for some time now. And it felt good at the beginning when you said I am not average LoL. Love you, keep up the great work. And I am watching this video at work RN LoL

[@nsk8ter524]

I wish my co-workers would care a little more. All they wanna do is sit in their lane and do the minimum needed to get a paycheck. Its so heart breaking. Championing improvements on a team that is checked out is exhausting. I just wanna write clean software.

[@wolfgangleon5635]

I do feel React is amazing, although it lacks certain things that are directly related to this video, like the fact that most companies aren't using React. Bear with me here! Yes, all FAANG and most big companies are indeed using React, but a vast majority (small to medium) are still using old legacy code. Stuff written in Cold Fusion and still kicking. Most of the time it's better to do a refactorization instead of a rewrite due, most of the time, there isn't documentation and the guy who built it doesn't work there anymore so it ends up being really hard, if not impossible, to do a complete fully functioning rewrite (with all features built during its lifetime). I would find it extremely interesting to have a technology like React, that could be system-agnostic. A mix of WebComponents/CustomElement with React components. Very powerful for all of the new stuff that we're going to have to build from now on as developers.

[@nyambe]

This might be the biggest difference with Vue developers which usually build it from scratch. They choose vue, because it's up to them to get it running and they don't want complications.

[@Pixelflames1]

vue rocks but react makes money lol

[@alexeyl1739]

Well... I was I then kind of developer who joined a team that was using Vue and I just had to pick it up and maintain. Maybe that's why I don't really like it that much

[@Fernando-ry5qt]

Funny, I am struggling to find Vue easier to use than React, maybe Im just not experienced enough but, refactoring Vue has been so painful..... with react I just take small chunks bit by bit and eventually reach a sustainable state of the module, on Vue Im struggling to break the coupling. Of course the project Im maintaining is horrible and plagued with bad practices.... but hey, I get paid to do it...

[@nyambe]

@@Fernando-ry5qt With vue is probably easier to refactor doing new clean composables. Because it is more accesible, is true that you can do many advanced things without knowing exactly what you are doing

[@adrianspikes6454]

Will nvr use React but like the channel. Keep inspiring ppl

[@DexterMorgan]

You and Prime need to do your own Macaulay Culkin / Ryan Gosling t-shirt inception.

[@_amatyas]

Thanks Theo! Really made my day.

[@kcwidman]

You should do a poll about how many people have used react for more than 10 hours. I’ve never even touched it. I’ve been a Svelte developer for the last year right out of collage.

[@SandraWantsCoke]

"collage" xD, it wasn't English you were studying right :D?

[@rendezone]

I’ve been thinking for a while what is that made React so successful, and I’ve heard many opinions about it being the mental model, JSX, etc. What I think is ultimately the factor that made it stick to the top is the documentation and evangelisation work that’s happened over the years, above all I would say.

[@FilipeAguiarCarvalho]

React is successful because it was a pioneer alongside Angular, both with tech Giants behind them. If it wasn't for a series of bad decisions, Angular could be the default choice now.

[@Fernando-ry5qt]

@@FilipeAguiarCarvalho Yeah that rewrite/breaking change from Angular 2 to 3 REALLY hit HARD. They never recovered from that..... That and the philosophy behind it, totally opinionated and structured at framework level, made the minimum bootstrap required to run a simple hello world huge and bloated compared to React. That being said, is not a bad framework, it is just boring haha.

[@Pixelflames1]

hmm i learned from several tutorials years before touching production code.

[@arashitempesta]

I've been very lucky that all places I've work the devs are all at least somewhat invested in knowing the basics to be efficient but I did meet some that needed a bit of hand holding even after working with react for a while, which Im not condemming or anything. I would say though, seems like it also depends on the size of the company you are in or the kind of company it is, I've had clients that said they were on the cutting edge but were so bogged down by red tape and really weird engineering decisions that the reality said otherwise, when you need to link the react tech lead the official npm docs to show them that you should commit the package-lock.. yeah experience also not necessarily mean they know the stack fully. Thats why knowing your tools is so important, even if its just to be efficient in your tasks but at some point if there arent anybody else in the team more invested in going further eventually the projects suffer for it in the long term.

[@dracodevil.]

I've been working with react for long years now, created and am currently creating systems from zero using React. Used cra, using bundlers, vite, a lot of state managers, frameworks built with it, etc etc. I used to like React, but nowadays, it's just the popular framework I'm obligated to use. I still watch a lot of videos, read the docs, and articles, because, unfortunately, it is the frontend meta that makes me money. Svelte fan btw.

[@shrin210]

Nice But why not Solidjs?

[@dracodevil.]

@@shrin210 you mean, why not use Solid? If this is what you're asking, it's because I'm often working with companies that already have some sort of tech stack.

[@pbkobold]

I personally use React because its simple API helps the smooth brained among us. _breaks all the hook rules, mis-specificies a dependency array, then directly modifies the state variable from a useState_

[@karmandev]

Your opening statement is wrong. Average is NOT median. Great video and message tho. I think this is a broader topic than just with React and can be applied in general when working together with others.

[@trogdooor]

man you are on a roll lately theo...

[@rezzor_]

You gotta put that one bell curve soyjack as the thumbnail

[@t3dotgg]

I MADE LIKE THREE WITH THE IQ CURVE. Couldn't make one clickable enough. :(

[@Leto2ndAtreides]

There's also the other side that wants to build stuff... But are relatively technology agnostic in what they will use to build that stuff - unless that tech makes their goals easier to achieve. btw, I feel that enough might have changed to justify a new full scale T3 tutorial since the last one.

[@alexandersemionov5790]

React here is an "Insert tech name" situation for the Enterprise world. Kotlin holds many people hostage too

[@EdwinMartin]

I bet Theo thought of this in the shower and started streaming right after 😄

[@samnmeje3486]

at 3:20 you didnt mention Vue js. is that on purpose.

[@noxus_z]

Yes, he always do that

[@Noritoshi-r8m]

Smooth intro, pretty cool

[@rendezone]

Excellent point Theo

[@viko1786]

I'm the average React dev. I'm doing it at my job, because I have to, paired with Angular sometimes. I'm a back end dev.

[@mosescosme8629]

Dang. This made me feel much better about my career.

[@tasmto]

Wait was this posted before on YT or did I just catch this on Twitch. Getting weird de-javu 😅I feel like Im going crazy😂

[@HiMyNameWaffy]

Here I am passionate about what I do, always trying to improve, building saas apps that help children but making a fraction of the "average react dev" in the US. Feels bad.

[@boredstudent9468]

Theo : "If you've seen my videos you're quite good at react" Me, watching for about a year : "wait what was react again"

[@arogueotaku]

Theo is one of thos rare KZbin's whose videos are exponentially better than the thumbnails.

[@MattBurton1987]

"I know react devs who didn't know about the cleanup function that make 200k a year" Me, unemployed, knowing full well what it does 😢

[@HDv2b]

You could have taken out react and put in any framework. As a living example, swap react for angular and you perfectly describe me in this video.

[@YiannisMiliaresis]

You can replace React with Java or C# and this video will still make sense

[@hungrypigeon7246]

Finally a video i can relate to

[@fischi9129]

I'm not the average react developer, I'm just a dev that enjoys content, I actually avoid react with a passion and hop on vue whenever I need to do web stuff cause I take half the taught and half the time to get something going and I find it just way simpler, might be personal opinion or not (and like vuetify provides all the components I need which results in me pretty much writing mostly HTML... that's it, barely any CSS (and tailwind if I need some), and barley and JS (just the bare min logic I need)

[@reubence_]

im an average youtube comment

[@justmrkhan]

I’m an average person responding

[@naranyala_dev]

this is nice type of content, like this one

[@mmy4328]

In terms of level of enthusiasm and technical skills: average Svelte dev > average React dev >> elite php+jquery dev

[@renegade5942]

I didnt know about the useEffect clean um function but i watch most of yiur videos because they are fun, Am i average?

[@ilearncode7365]

You heard it here: if you watch and subscribe to him, it statistically increases your react skill in the distribution curve.

[@babylon6g]

Dark matter devs do front ends as well.

[@David.Lopezz]

And I'm here just trying to land a job with the framework I pick 😢

[@coder159]

Bro, chill on the thumbnails, hot damn

[@lilwage6910]

I think, Theo, one mistake you make in this video is assuming your viewers are all gainfully employed and passionate React developers. I'm sure many are, but I have no doubt a sizeable chunk is like me, unemployed and trying to learn the market requirements. We're below the average react dev, because the job market is so inflated you have to have multiple finished solo projects to even make it to an interview. Odd to me how anyone can even get to the position of senior developer without knowing the fundamentals of useEffect, for instance. Through what practice did this man develop the skills he needed to demonstrate to a potential employer? Or is it a case of switching languages after having mastered a previous one?

[@amyblankenship3483]

The problem with React is even really good React developers think they understand it, but don't. The whole "any function defined inside a component contains a snapshot of potentially old values" is just prohibitively difficult for most developers. I see blog post after blog post where people are getting it wrong, and by definition if you're blogging you're likely well above average. So the average developer has essentially no clue, and good developers are shooting themselves in the foot more often than not.

[@wiztek1197]

That thumbnail hurts

[@wota_pov]

tbh, i’m one of the devs who hate react, luckily we are using tailwind and no longer uses redux. but the overall experience is still bad, especially for the validation

[@wichad3]

Great take!

[@jouebien]

The enthusiast screamed about react & every new CMS (the user defined data sort) under the sun and we spent the next 3 years floundering in issues we'd already solved in vue+wordpress (or django). And we still hadn't resolved the CMS issue in the fourth year. Oh yes just let me context switch into three deferent CMS tools in a week + spend ages updating strapi versions.

[@derzw3rg]

I don’t Write react code at all. To be honest I hate jsx and I would rather write some page in svelte. But my job is vanilla js, sass, Twig vue in a php (Symfony) world. And I still love to watch your videos, because I like the mindset you are in and what you are say.

[@kelghou2437]

I know many devs like that

[@peterdaze1]

Since life is inherently cruel, I go through this on a daly basis with Angular.. just change everytime you said react to angular and that’s me 😢

[@devinjohnson5759]

NGL he just confused me saing the average represents the midde. Isn't the average meant to represent what you'll most likely see based on the data and the median represents the middle? Please let me know if I'm buggin out my mind right now.

[@dzienisz]

something is wrong with the audio?

[@succatash]

So by typing create-t3-app I'm above average?

[@eliassmith7949]

It doesn’t matter in the end, you will get the same amount of money as rest of devs, probably even less

[@kissu_io]

VueJS dev here. ✌🏻

[@RamkrishanYT]

I'm not an average react dev I'm not a react dev I'm a Salesforce dev 😢

[@crab-cake]

in my experience, developers that tend to really like react haven't exposed themselves to other technologies and approaches. i have converted many coworkers that have previously loved react to hate working with it in favor of solid. it's not even a debate that solid is *objectively* better. react has the ecosystem.

[@FabuBrik]

my job title says I'm mid

[@kot-duott]

The project at my current job uses Vue instad of React, so I had to switch to using Vue, and you know what? Vue works just as fine. So does React really matter that much?

[@thomassynths]

Yup I'm definitely not an average React developer. I've never use it or alternatives. Backend dev FTW!

[@TheBrotado]

I'm not the average react developer, i'm not even a react developer. 😅