“Forget about frameworks, libaries and latest tools. Learn Vanilla Javascript”.

These are the words I keep hearing from veteran developers who have decades of experience. People who have seen it all.

I could not comprehend the seriousness of their advice last year at the beginning of my journey. Now I can truly appreciate the magnitude, wisdom in the advice I received.

As I attempt to learn React / Redux / Node JS or Express. It is now clear to me that, without a solid foundational understanding of Vanilla ES6 Javascript, it would be either impossible or extremely difficult to understand what these technologies are doing behind the scene, let alone utilizing them in the right places to tackle programming problems.

At the beginning and as a beginner, it was difficult to resist the temptation to jump into frameworks right away. I took the advice from more experienced developers onboard, invested a huge amount of time to learn about promises, asynchronous, scope, closures, call back functions, hoisting, control flow and a lot more at the very beginning of my journey. The decision pays off well as I can pick up React / Redux and NodeJS relatively quick, these technologies utilize a lot of Vanilla Javascript.

In saying that, I am aware React / Redux / NodeJS and other Javascript technologies are relatively easy to get started but difficult to master. It is compulsory to keep learning both to advance my knowledge and skillset in these areas.

Overall, I can testify that learning pure Javascript, understand what the language is doing behind the scene gave me the leverage to branch out and pick up other technologies relatively quickly.