This chapter introduced you to the concept of tooling in the React ecosystem. You learned that React, at its core, is a simple library and that it depends on the use of several tools to be of any value in the real world. Frameworks try to provide all of the tooling that you'll ever need for your project. While convenient, the needs of the framework users are difficult to predict and can be a distraction from core functionality.

Next, you learned that tooling in React can be a challenge because as a React developer, you're responsible for choosing the right tools and managing their configuration. You then got an overview of the tooling that you'll learn about in more detail throughout the remainder of this book. Lastly, you learned that some tools are critical for React development and you'll need to get them set up right away. Others are optional, and you might not start using them till there's an actual need later on in the life of the project.

In the next chapter, you'll use the Create React App tool to bootstrap a React project.