When people hear React, they think of a focused library used for efficiently rendering user interfaces. When people hear framework, they think of a large system that might have a few useful tools within it but is otherwise a bloated mess. They're correct about frameworks for the most part, but saying that React isn't a framework is a little misleading.
If you take React out of the box and try to do any meaningful development with it, you'll promptly hit a wall. This is because instead of being distributed as a monolithic framework, React is better described as a core library surrounded by an ecosystem of tools.
The advantage of a framework is that you can install the core library along with the supported tooling in one shot. The downside is that every project is different and you can't be sure what tools you need versus those that you won't. Another advantage to having an ecosystem of tools is that they can evolve independently from one another; you don't have to wait for a new release of the entire framework to get an enhancement for one of the tools that your project uses.
The aim of this book is to show you how to best utilize the tooling ecosystem surrounding React. In this chapter, you'll be introduced to the concept of React tooling by learning the following:
- React without tooling
- Introduction to tooling
- The tools covered in this book
- Deciding which tools are needed for your project
