Alternatively, why should I not be considering React? Is everybody using something else these days? Looking to build a front-end to interact with some REST APIs.
React is a decent choice for that. Go ahead and learn it.
If you want to do frontend in 99% of shops - React by itself is not enough. People will tell you it's "just a library" - and that's technically true.
But in the wild you'll be dealing with something I call "Enterprise React". A bloated monstrosity of a web project created with create-react-app (Which is a nightmare of needless complexity under a thin and very slow veneer of convenience). Your react and general coding skills will be secondary to your skills as a sort of npm sysadmin, because best practices are to download a library for every whim anyone ever has.
That is unless you never update it your packages while you are there. Which honestly - I've recently learned - is the smarter career play.
So sure, learn react, make your SPA. But be careful of getting too deep into it, because that way lies madness.
This is my experience exactly with React. I hate it. I advocate for html over the wire (LiveView, Hotwire, htmx, etc) or even just plain html templates (they are not evil!) to whoever will listen. I realize SPA frameworks have a place, but those places occur much less frequently than people suppose (or want).
I'm saving your comment to show people next time I encounter another team mindlessly reaching for React and friends.
No it’s not. create-react-app barely does anything except bootstrapping a project with sane defaults. It could improve on devDependencies but they don’t depend on a lot more that what you’d need to setup yourself anyway.
Hooks (functions?) are the way forward for React. Classes were the old way. But this book has both. Author's rationale is "A controversial decision was the inclusion of class components in addition to function components. Function components are likely the way forward; however, the reader is likely to encounter existing code and tutorials that talk only about class components. Knowing both syntaxes doubles the chances of reading and understanding code in the wild". Seems reasonable.
Also definitely take a look at the React Docs Beta at https://beta.reactjs.org/
They seem to be a substantial improvement over the previous docs. All explanations are written using Hooks rather than classes.
I love this 10 min intro video to React Docs Beta by Rachel Nabors from React Conf 2021. Has subtitles. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mneDaMYOKP8
Some comments have said React might be a way to hell, so if you wanna improve your JavaScript or CSS, there are 2 well-regarded paid courses:
Just JavaScript by Dan Abramov. He's a member of the React team, and a co-author of Redux and Create React App. https://justjavascript.com/
CSS course by Josh Comeau. https://css-for-js.dev/
Both are paid courses.
If you worried about outdatedness just try to get a book made after the introduction of React Hooks which should be end of 2018/early 2019. I think the physical Road to React on Amazon isn't updated, don't buy that lol, best to buy the ebook file from that dudes website and read it off of a kindle or something.
Made by Kent, some dude that wrote a popular testing library for React. Pretty good tutorials. I'm quite positive that it's up to date.
(All the books I learned from are out of date)