[freehunter]

And that's a valid approach, I learned React (and unfortunately Redux) from your courses and they're very high quality. I really do appreciate the handful of your courses I've bought and owe you a lot more than the $10 I paid for the Udemy video.

However, it is exceedingly difficult to find any React tutorial that doesn't have Redux, making it seem to beginners that Redux is required for React. And Redux is entirely overwhelming, especially for a newbie like when I was learning React. It took me three or four courses until I was comfortable and knowledgable enough to strip Redux from my projects, and after that my speed and productivity skyrocketed.

When I was first learning React from your video, I'll admit I turned it off several times, frustrated with the mindset that I was never going to learn React and React was stupid because what do you mean I need to hydrate a store and map state to props and maintain a file listing all of the functions I have? Turns out it's just Redux that I hate. React is fine. And without experiencing the pain that Redux solves, Redux (to me, as a beginner) just seems like completely unnecessary boilerplate that keeps me out of the React ecosystem.

Anyway that's just one person's feedback. I'm sure Redux solves some very real pains, but to me as a beginner, Redux is more of a pain than the problem it's designed to solve (because I've never experienced the problem it's designed to solve) and it is very difficult to find a high-quality course or demo project that doesn't include it.

[acemarke]

FWIW, our recommendation has always been to focus on learning React first, and _then_ learn Redux once you're comfortable with React. That minimizes the number of new concepts you're learning at once, clarifies the differences between what React and Redux are and how to use them, and helps show why Redux might be useful alongside React.

[freehunter]

Which leads nicely back to my statement of

>What I hear from the Redux devs does not in any way line up with what I heard from Brad Traversy or Stephen Grider

This perception will continue (and only get worse) the more junior devs are educated in trainings/bootcamps that require Redux in your first project. This is the reason so many people have such negative reactions to Redux, they're not yet comfortable with React (which is a new way of thinking by itself) before Redux is added into the mix and it gets very overwhelming very quickly.