You finished the first course, built a real app, and felt good about it. Then you opened a "real" React project — maybe songbird — to see how the pros do it, and the floor dropped out. Folders of files, words you'd never seen, nothing that looked like what you'd just written.
That feeling is exactly why this course exists.
There's no cliff here — just a short set of steps. Five lessons, one new idea each, rebuilding the app you already know. By the last one you'll open that "real" project again and recognize it: your code, grown up. Because the point isn't React. The point is you, reading real code.
You did the first course — or you can already fetch from Concord and put the results on a page in plain HTML and JavaScript. You have not touched React, and that's the whole point: we start there together.
Already write React? You're welcome to skim, but this is a "your first React app" course, written gently and on purpose. For a fast reference, Concord's
docs/API.mdand songbird's source are right there.
Concord needs to be running — the same Scripture engine from the first course. Check it in 30 seconds by opening this in your browser:
http://localhost:8000/healthzYou're ready when a short line of data comes back — a few counts (translations, verses, places), not a styled page. Nothing there? Concord's Quick start gets it running.
If you ran Concord for the first course, grab the current version before you begin — this course uses a newer feature, and the Quick start above always pulls the latest. (Starting fresh? You'll get the right one automatically.)
Lesson 1 is already a page you run — it loads React — so you'll do the same quick local-preview setup you used in the first course. A couple of minutes, once. See SETUP.md.
Open Lesson 1. It's the verse you fetched in the first course, rebuilt the React way — and it's a short one.
What's ahead, one small win at a time: the same verse the new way, a search that updates as you type, your own reusable building blocks, verses that link to other verses — and then the lesson that's really the point: opening a real app and finding you can read it.
MIT © 2026 Kris Bennett — see LICENSE. (Parity with Concord and the first course.)