I just finished going through Learn Redux by Wes Bos. This course is really good. It's free. It's short. It somehow manages to both give a great overview on Redux and dig into the details of how it works in just 2.5 hours. And although I've come up with strategies to complete the online courses I enroll in, I was very close to not finishing this one halfway through.

What happened?

First, I want to mention that I'm the mother of two young toddlers. So anyone with kids will know that at this season of life, learning time is at a premium.
I want spent the little bits of free time I have as efficiently as possible. So I either want to learn things that are very relevant or things that really interest me.

I attended a Hooks training in San Francisco where the trainers kept emphasizing that Redux functionality is now in React via hooks. Much in the same way jQuery is now apart of the browser. Realizing that Redux will likely be falling out of favor for React hooks, I didn't feel as motivated to finish the course.

But more I thought about it, I came up with 3 good reasons to continue learning about Redux.

1. There is a lot of projects still using Redux.

Although I'm not personally working with Redux, I know there is a lot of React projects out there that do. Even in my own company, there are active React/Redux projects and there is no plan to switch over in the near future.

2. Learning Redux helped me understand useReducer.

The useReducer hook was a little confusing to me at first, but having some idea about Redux actually helped me understand this hook better.

3. Not every company likes to upgrade.

As engineers, we tend to want to always upgrade to the latest and greatest. Sometimes this is not possible. If you end up at a company or situation where only a pre-hooks React version is allowed, Redux is still a viable solution for state management.

In conclusion, I still think it was worth my time to finish the course. Wes Bos is a knowledgeable instructor and there is a good probability that I may end up working on a project using Redux. And at the very least, it helped me with my understand of the useReducer hook.