My Journey from Angular to React in 2021

Hi Folks, long time no see 👋🏼 😷

Hope everyone is safe & doing fine amidst this Covid situation.

This time, I have a different topic to talk about. i.e. "How I transitioned from an Angular Developer to a Senior React Developer in 2021."

Hope you will learn and be able to relate a thing or two from my journey.

Angular history

I got introduced to Angular back in 2018 when I was doing my PG-DAC course in Sunbeam Institute(CDAC Centre), Pune. It was very brief but it got me started with Angular Development.

After the course was completed, I got a job offer from Siemens India.

Where I spent the last +3 years working on Angular related projects.

I learned so much during this time from my awesome colleagues and through self-teaching. This time helped me build a strong foundation as a framework-agnostic web developer.

During this time I also explored Web-Assembly, CSS3(in-depth) and many other interesting topics related to web development.

Roadblocks ahead

I think Angular is pretty good as a framework, in fact, in certain aspects, it's better than react(Now that I work with react, I'm allowed to say that 😅). But, much as I loved working with Angular on different projects. Soon I realised that, that's not what everybody thinks.

When I learned about React/Vue's popularity 1 year back. I was stunned. I did my research at the time and I just could not ignore the fact that,

• React has much more jobs than Angular worldwide. which means more opportunities.
• A pretty good number of big companies use React. For example Netflix, Twitter, Airbnb, AWS to name a few.
• Sheer amount of community size that reacts has especially because of JS(as opposed to TS based Angular). Which means more support.

This is just scratching the surface. A lot of new startups prefer to React as their go-to framework for web development. This is also the reason I got a job at Cashfree as well.

You can find many detailed comparisons in the following articles,

• https://fulcrum.rocks/blog/angular-vs-react/
• https://www.simform.com/blog/angular-vs-react

So my reason was not something technical, like react is much better than angular when it comes performance, bla bla bla! Because I don't think one is better than the other, both are great frameworks build by brilliant people. It was rather the ecosystem that React has developed so far, that led me to believe, it's time to switch the framework for good.

React Journey

I had decided to switch to react as my primary framework about a year ago.

Initially, I did not have any idea where to start? So I started with some youtube videos to get some feel of React. But they were short and did not provide much information. I used to create small applications like the Todo app or tic-tac-toe game etc. in my spare time. But it was still not enough. Unlike Angular, I did not work on React in a professional capacity at the time. So It was hard for me to understand how the entire ecosystem works together. All I was working on was some small apps that only gave me insights into few features of React.

Trust me, I hated React in the first few weeks as I was heavily used to Typescript before that (Angular people can relate better) 😂

After quite some time(Approx. 6 months 😅), I realised that the only way for me to learn a great deal about React is through some bigger project.

So started looking for such courses on Udemy(My goto learning platform, also created in React 😉).

After compiling down to a few courses, The course that I found the most helpful was,

Complete React Developer in 2021 (w/ Redux, Hooks, GraphQL)

BTW, this is not an affiliated link.

Authors of the course Andrei Neagoie & Yihua Zhang are very experienced & passionate developers. Their teaching style is also pretty simple. You learn everything by doing. They have only worked on one project throughout the course to teach all the below topics, which helps you understand how the entire ecosystem works together(which you should know!).

It teaches you about,

• React libraries like React-router, Redux, Thunk, Redux-saga etc.
• Styled components
• HOC, Container patterns
• React Hooks
• Context API
• GrapghQL + Apollo
• Performance Optimisation
• Testing
• and much more...

On top of that, ZTM(ZeroToMastery) gives you access to the discord community which has a huge number of active members.

I just can't emphasise enough, how great this course is ❤️.

React Dev Job

At this point, I was already familiar with React to pretty good lengths. I had also worked on a lot of projects. You can find them on my portfolio here.

I also created my portfolio using react during this time to stand out even more.

Now it was time to search for a react job and cracking it.

In the beginning I tried using platforms like Naukri.com, LinkedIn.com etc. I used to apply almost everywhere in the beginning(with my so-called Indian Mentality 😅), Good number of companies used to follow up soon as well. But After having discussions, I used to get the same feeling over and over again. Interviews felt a bit easy. I could not picture myself learning something in these companies(Not referring to every company!). So I wanted to apply for a job at some startups that I knew back then and were doing great IMHO. Coincidentally, One day I tried applying to this blogging platform, Hashnode. At the time they used to post their jobs on Notion & AngelList.

That's how I got to know about AngelList. There were few other good sites that I found later. But AngelList changed my life and Aspirations. It not only had great startups listed on it, It even had a job posting from across the world with compensation mentioned. That just blew my mind and I got a better stand of how much I am worth in the IT industry.

I now started compiling job opportunities from AngelList. I started applying soon after.

To be honest, I applied at more than 100 job postings, I gave more than 40 interviews during the span of 3 months. As I spent a lot of time being interviewed almost every day. I learned a lot about my improvement areas and eventually became good at those.

At the end of this Job Search Spree. I found my current company Cashfree and I finally accepted an offer for Senior Frontend Developer. At Cashfree alone I gave about 4 Interviews and some Technical Tests.

Advice

Few things that helped me.

• Preparing for almost a year, being interviewed 40+ times, creating your own portfolio. All of it might look daunting to some people(including me 1 year ago). But don't let it discourage you from starting small. I never planned to do this many things in the first place. It just happened. So don't worry, It's worth the effort.
• Work on your online presence for better opportunities.
• Get your basics right.(I mean JavaScript, CSS in case of frontend dev)
• Be Patient in your job search. You don't have to join the first company you apply to. You almost always get less pay than you deserve that way.
• Be open-minded for opportunities and plan logically.
• Most important, Don't get into this Angular vs. React fight 😂. Both are great and you should know both(at least to a certain extent).

I used to blog on fullyunderstood.com, you can check my previous blogs there.

From here onwards, I'll be posting all my blogs on this domain 👉🏼 blog.indrajeet.me.

In case you are interested in Technical blogs regarding web development. You can consider following me here, on LinkedIn or on Twitter .