I guess it depends on how you learn. I personally used CRA in my learning process and it helped me get up to speed in understanding React fundamentals (reconciliation, lifecycles, state management..) Then I started going down into the stack and understanding Webpack, etc..

For me personally it would be exasperating to learn all of the stuff that CRA bootstraps before actually getting to learn React.

I don't know, because haven't needed to step outside those boundaries. I'm sure it will be painful when that happens, but by that point, I'll have gotten so much done that I probably won't care too much.

I had a gulp build process I used before create-react-app; it was gross to get working, but then worked just fine. I could live without create-react-app, but why would I?

If you hit the point where you're considering ejecting, check out react-app-rewired. If you just need additional Webpack plugins, react-app-rewired can do that for you without the need to completely eject your app.

I've never used create-react-app and I still love React.

> But what happens when you inevitably need to step outside the boundaries set by create-react-app?

Been working on a real-world c-r-a based project for 8 months and this is yet to happen. And the upgrade process has been a dream (update 1 dependency), no breakages so far.

In fact I now regret my other attempts to go off the rails (adding Sass), it wasn't worth it.

You can eject the app to exit CRA's umbrella. All of your configuration and code still works, you just also gain access to the project config and Webpack config that CRA formally dealt with for you.

A lot of the time, simply using react-app-rewired is sufficient in place of ejecting, especially if the only thing you need are some Webpack plugins.

My last and current job have both uses react-app-rewired to monkey-patch create-react-app.