I'm going to get hate for this. That's fine.
When I started out, everyone told me the same thing: pick a framework, get good at it, build projects. React was the obvious choice. It was everywhere. Every job post. Every tutorial. Every bootcamp.
So I did. I learned React.
And it was the single biggest waste of my early career.
Not because React is bad
Let me be clear — React is fine. Use it. Ship stuff with it. Whatever.
The problem wasn't React. The problem was that I learned React instead of learning how the web actually works.
I could build a SPA with client-side routing, global state management, and a component library. Impressive, right?
But I couldn't explain what happens between typing a URL and seeing a page.
I didn't know what a 304 was. I thought cookies were just for auth. I had no idea why my API calls were "slow" (spoiler: I was making 47 of them on page load).
The uncomfortable truth
Frameworks are career accelerators. Fundamentals are career foundations.
You can get a job with React. You can't debug production with it.
The moment something breaks outside your component tree — a CORS error, a dropped WebSocket connection, a query that takes 8 seconds — you're the person staring at the screen waiting for someone smarter to fix it.
That was me. For longer than I'd like to admit.
What I wish someone told me
Spend your first six months on the boring stuff.
HTTP. Like, really learn it. Methods, headers, status codes, caching. Read the actual RFC if you're feeling spicy. You'll reference this knowledge every single day for the rest of your career.
SQL. Not just SELECT * FROM users. Joins, indexes, query plans. Understand why your query is slow, not just that it is.
How your OS talks to the network. What a socket is. What DNS does. Why localhost:3000 works.
None of this is exciting. None of this gets likes on Twitter. But it compounds forever, and it never goes out of style.
React will be replaced. HTTP won't.
"But I need a job NOW"
Yeah, I get it. Frameworks get you hired. I'm not saying don't learn one.
I'm saying don't learn one first.
Or at least — learn them in parallel. For every hour you spend on useEffect, spend thirty minutes reading about what your browser actually sends when you click a link. You'll be shocked how much of React's magic is just hiding HTTP from you.
The real test
Here's how I check if someone actually understands what they're building:
"Your app is slow. Where do you look?"
If the answer starts with "I'd check my React components for unnecessary re-renders" — that's a React developer.
If the answer starts with "I'd open the Network tab" — that's a web developer.
The second person gets the offer. Every time.
So what should juniors actually do?
Stop optimizing for the framework of the year. Start optimizing for knowledge that doesn't expire.
Build something without a framework. Just HTML, CSS, and vanilla JS talking to an API. Feel the pain. Understand what the framework is saving you from.
Then pick React or Vue or Svelte or whatever. You'll learn it in half the time, because you'll actually understand what it's abstracting.
And ten years from now, when React is the new jQuery, you'll still be fine.
What was the worst career advice you got as a junior? Genuinely curious — drop it in the comments.
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