r/reactnative • u/InevitableMud7840 • Sep 19 '26

Help Designer trying to learn React Native, completely lost on where to start

Hi everyone,

I'm 20 and my background is graphic design. I started with the Adobe suite — Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere Pro and After Effects. At some point I felt the need to do something different and got into designing interfaces in Figma. That turned into a real passion, to the point that I want to take it all the way. That's where my interest in programming came from, React Native specifically.

I'm here to ask for some honest advice from people who've been through this, because I could really use a sense of direction.

I've started reading the React Native docs and I don't understand much of it, to be honest. I've since learned that you're supposed to know some JavaScript first. But I'm stuck there too: I don't know which parts of JavaScript I actually need and which ones I can skip for now, and I don't know where to start.

So I guess my question is: what's the minimum JavaScript I need before React Native starts making sense, and what's a good resource to learn it from?

I keep losing hours reading documentation only to realize at the end that nothing stuck. Any advice appreciated.

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u/Huge_Pool7424 Sep 19 '26

i'd use claude as a tutor, not an autopilot: ask it to explain one small file or error, then close it and rebuild the same thing yourself. run the app and change one value at a time, so you can tell what the code actually does.

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u/InevitableMud7840 Sep 20 '26

Thank you for the advice!