Are there any starter tutorials that would build from vanilla JaveScript, implementing solutions to developer problems, then demonstrating how one might use an existing, well-exercised framework to solve those problems? Every time I go try to learn about a framework from the project web site, they assume a tremendous amount of context.
Tangentially, my most recent frustration: I wanted to try a couple frameworks together (they had no overlap in functionality - not like trying to use React and Vue together), and they both came with CLI tools to initialize an empty project and complained when it wasn't empty. They both had different opinions about how to structure project directories, and neither explained in an obvious place how else one might get started.
It's a difficult place to start from, because a lot of react tutorials are out of date, misleading, shallow, or deep in useless ways.
I think most people learn these frameworks by being put to work on a mature code base with established patterns, that already uses a set of frameworks. At first, you kind of don't understand the control flow, but you get better week over week from there. Over time, you are bootstraping your own opinions by asking questions and learning hands-on.
Eventually, you can start a project from scratch including the minimal dependencies yourself, as you learn what's actually useful, vs what's "the same interface, but dressed for business".
That being said, I'd recommend getting started with `create-react-app`, and following some of the tutorials. I'd then recommend jumping into hooks (https://reactjs.org/docs/hooks-intro.html) as soon as possible, unless you have to maintain an older codebase that uses classes, because in "modern" react code, you're almost never using classes any more, and that reality bomb is not typically dropped on you in most react tutorials.
Tangentially, my most recent frustration: I wanted to try a couple frameworks together (they had no overlap in functionality - not like trying to use React and Vue together), and they both came with CLI tools to initialize an empty project and complained when it wasn't empty. They both had different opinions about how to structure project directories, and neither explained in an obvious place how else one might get started.