Finally biting bullet and learning react (I've had run ins in the past) by converting a vanilla js handcoded-web (super complicated) app to react. Probably not the best app to learn on as it requires a Mapbox map which means you have to interface with the map api in a very untraditional way.
Was a little new to npm as well, but got rolling after a while. Not done yet, still little issues with flow state, for example, if I have a dual range slider in react with clearly styled and labeled beg and ending sliders values, how do I drag one slider over the other and force swapping the two but continue the UI motion. Currently I'm just overriding the event target.