Build Your Own: React, ProseMirror, and Redux

Hello! I'm a software engineer on the Oak team at the New York Times (Oak is the name of the collaborative text editor that the newsroom uses to write the stories that go on nytimes.com).

Last year, while working on Oak, we decided to take a step back and learn, as a team, how the tools we used really worked. In particular, we'd spent years trying to get ProseMirror to play well with React and Redux, but had struggled to reconcile their not-quite-compatible philosophies about DOM and state management.

What we sketched out became “Build Your Own”. “Build Your Own” is a five-part syllabus that breaks down React, ProseMirror, and Redux, and walks through how to build them back up from scratch. It’s based on (and includes) the absolutely wonderful “Build your own React” tutorial from Rodrigo Pombo. Inspired by that tutorial, we wrote similar walkthroughs for building Redux and the ProseMirror EditorView component as well. Finally, to ensure that everyone felt comfortable with the terminology and fundamentals of using the library, we built quick refresher courses on the basics of React and ProseMirror. I'm around to answer any questions that anyone might have about the courses, the team, or the Times! Hope you enjoy!