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Manuel Bieh has worked as a Freelancer in Frontend-/JavaScript Development since 2012.

Before deciding to enter the life of a freelancer, I had roughly 10 years of experience under my belt — helping companies of different scales with Frontend Development. For a long time, I have identified as more of a generalist rather than a specialist. It will be hard to find a technology I have not at least tried or touched upon in my career. With the exception of JavaScript itself, I have never really thought of myself as a specialist in any field or technology. This changed drastically and suddenly when a friend of mine, who is also a developer, told me about React in 2014. Driven by my curiosity and an opportunity to use it professionally for Zalando, I delved deeper into React.

I have to admit, at the start I found React a little strange — this is not uncommon by the way, especially for people new to React — but the more I explored and researched, the more I tried to expose myself to React, the more my initial skepticism turned into enthusiasm. Ever since, React has been the tool of choice in all of my projects where I deemed it a good fit. During this time, I have learned a ton and I'm still learning every day. I've worked in teams with fewer than 5 people but also in bigger teams of over 30 people and shared my React knowledge with them while, of course, soaking up more knowledge myself.

The complexity of React should not be underestimated, however. It's possible to start out with React and build applications fairly quickly. If you value quality though, there is much to learn to increase code quality, performance and maintenance. Some of this wisdom is not even known to people who have worked with React professionally for quite a while. Hence, I would not describe myself as an expert, despite years of daily and intense exposure to React. Nevertheless, I hope I have amassed a substantial amount of knowledge that I can share with you all in the form of this book, to ease the transition and to provide you with a few tips.

Sibylle Sehl is a Berlin-based Software Engineer.

After graduating in 2017 with a MSc in Computer Science, Sibylle has worked as a Technical Product Manager, Frontend Developer and finally as a Software Engineer in a variety of organizations. Studying abroad for the entirety of her degree and working abroad, translating technical concepts from one language to another has never been a problem for her and something she has embraced since she entered the industry.

Sibylle has a passion for making technical content accessible to a greater audience of people. She occasionally does public speaking and has also taught Web Development courses for non-profits in the past. React has been one of her favorite tools in the development space since she has started working as an Engineer and continues to delight her the longer she works with it. Its declarative nature to build user interfaces has appealed to her from the beginning and led her to specialize in React.

She now works at ResearchGate as a Software Engineer using React on a daily basis whilst also learning PHP and GraphQL to become Fullstack.

She is the translator of React Deep Dive.