I’m afraid there isn’t a clear answer that can be given here.

On the one hand, every person learns at a different pace, so naturally, some of us are going to make huge progress in a very short time span, whereas others will take a little longer.

On the other hand, React is constantly changing. It wouldn’t be fair to say that you learn it once and then never use the skill forever. You need to be constantly catching up with the latest developments. So having this in mind you will never ‘learn’ React 100%. 

My personal experience

For me, it was one of the first tech skills that I have learned after starting my career as an engineer. I remember that it took me between 4 and 6 weeks to understand the basics and to be able to deliver simple applications.

However, it took me between 6 – 12 months of daily work with the framework to really understand the ins and outs of it. It was after that point that I felt confident enough to advise my colleagues on how to improve their code and to lead complex technical projects.

Lack of progress

You may also feel like you’re doing great progress at the very beginning, but it’s worth keeping in mind that at the very beginning you’ll be building very simple interfaces.

The real complexity comes when you’re working on production-level applications that require a really deep dive into the framework on your end. At this point, it would be really useful if you could start looking for a permanent job that would enable you to work on this type of application. You won’t master the skill unless you use it daily.

The absolute basics

It’s also worth mentioning that the above timelines do not include the time that I spent studying HTML, CSS and JS. I

f you’re starting from absolute nothing then you probably need to add between 2 to 3 months. You’ll need this time to absolutely understand the fundamental of developing web applications. It’s pretty much impossible to learn React without learning those first.

Other technical skills

React is one of those skills that are very difficult to reason about when you’re just learning to code. It’s probably less difficult when you start learning having already some experience in the area.

Some parts of the documentation probably won’t be making much sense to you initially. You need to be going over them time after time until you finally have the Eureka moment when all the pieces of the puzzle start coming together.

Don’t forget that there are also some other tools that every React engineer should be familiar with. Some of those are: 

• TypeScript
• graphQL
• Redux
• MobX
• Material UI
• Tailwind CSS

And many more 🙂

👋 Hey, I'm Dawid Budaszewski

Hello! I'm Dawid. I'm a full-stack developer with a couple of years of experience under my belt. I spent most of my career working with React. I also built reacterry.com, an online portal with React coding challenges.