For a long time Webpack was one of the biggest barriers-to-entry for someone wanting to learn React. There’s a lot of boilerplate configuration that can be confusing, especially if you’re new to React.

Even in a talk trying to show how easy React is to set up, it can be very difficult to try and learn each and every step in the setup process.

Not too long after React was first out of beta, the team at Facebook made create-react-app. It was an attempt to make spinning up a (very fully-loaded version of a) React app as simple as typing a single command:

npx create-react-app my-app

Nice! And honestly, this 👆 method of creating a new React app is awesome if you want something that has lots of bells and whistles right from the get-go, and you’re okay with having your app start as a fairly heavy/large app.

That heaviness comes from the many dependencies, loaders, plugins, and so on automatically installed as node_modules that take up a lot of space for each app. The Finder summary image below is from one of my create-react-app apps. 😱

#react #parcel #javascript #developer