The biggest hurdle to starting with React is getting your JSX files to compile to plain JavaScript. My preference is to use webpack to accomplish this.
If you go and google “react webpack starter” you get some great, fully featured starters like react-starter. The problem is if you’re not starting from scratch, it can be very hard to see what files / settings / etc you need to bring into your project to make it work.
I’ve created a “barebones” setup of using React with webpack. It is the bare minimum configurations and packages you need to get it working. I used the react-webpack repo as an example and removed anything that wasn’t absolutely required for getting React & webpack working together.
Justin Carmony 