Create React App is an npm package which makes it much quicker and simpler for us to set up our React applications. You can perform these steps manually, or even use React as a CDN, but Create React App comes with a package of configured items including our pre-configured items such as: Webpack, Babel, RTL, and Jest. npx is the tool used to download create-react-app templates, this downloads the latest templates each time, so if you are wanting to use a specific version remember to provide a version argument (for instance if you are spinning up docker containers to run your app in).