First Workshop JS in Montevideo!
Tags: javascript, react, workshop
Published: 2019-04-05 17:48:57

---
title: First Workshop JS in Montevideo!
published: true
description: On May 26, we held a React JS workshop in Mercado Libre!
tags: javascript, react, workshop
---

In recent years, in Mercado Libre, we have begun to use new technologies in all our frontends. It has been a long way, but now we have a Frontend technological Stack that has the following components:
 - Node JS as the server for our frontend applications
 - React JS for our client-side code
 - Webpack

With this new adoption, it has really been a change in our way of working and developing. We have substantially lowered the development, generation of versions and deployment times, as well as installation and testing times. It has been a great success for all of us who developed frontend in Mercado Libre!

And for this reason, we decided that it was a good opportunity to start promoting the use of these frontend technologies in the community in Uruguay, and that is why we organized one of the first JS workshops in Montevideo.

## From scracht!

We wanted to start the beginning, so that anyone who is really interested in frontend can join the event and learn a little about these technologies. With this in mind, we decided to hold the workshop on React JS.

React is a library developed by Facebook, oriented to the development of components. It seeks to create visual units independently so that later these components can work together creating more complex applications. This approach is very important for us, since one of our objectives when developing frontends is that Mercado Libre maintains a visual coherence throughout the user experience, and with React JS, it is very simple and fast for us to share different components in order to maintain that coherence.

With all this, with [Martin Varela](https://twitter.com/martinvarelaaaa) we decided to put together an event where the community could get closer and learn a bit of this technology, to have the basic concepts and be able to promote the use in their companies or in their personal projects.

![Martin showing off at the event](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2400/1*00tI8oMAWw9XLqk-jkxkvQ.jpeg)

## The event

This workshop was held on May 26 and the places to come quickly sold out. About 40 people came to the Mercado Libre development center in WTC in the Buceo zone in Montevideo.

During the workshop, we carried out a dynamic that interspersed theoretical aspects with practical ones. Our idea was to give a workshop where you can quickly apply the concepts seen, in order to increase the understanding of them. Making this approach, we set up a practical exercise where each person had to make a list and a search engine of Mercado Libre products, which we were building in each stage using concepts seen in the practical part.

At the same time, we created a [practical/theoretical material](https://workshops-js-montevideo.gitbook.io/react/) that served as a guide to perform these exercises, as well as allowing people to follow the workshop in a more detailed manner and with code exercises. This material allowed them to see examples and have a knowledge base to which they can return.We used the wonderful tool of GitBook to make this material.

![Martin showing off at the event](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2400/1*WrK1YWVt54gCovcQdyveKQ.jpeg)

The workshop was a success, all those who joined contributed a lot and in general terms, we received very good feedback from the workshop, since 100% of the people commented that they would return to another.

![Martin showing off at the event](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2400/1*5QwvldAX4CmFtAij2s29kQ.jpeg)

We want to thank all the people who came to the workshop as it was a great experience and we hope that they left wanting to know a little more about these technologies, as well as the way in which we apply them here in Mercado Libre.

We also thank all the people in Mercado Libre who helped us organize the workshop!