Without React we might not have had the JavaScript framework explosion, we'd all be programming in Angular JS.

Maybe I'm exaggerating slightly, but I think we should judge frameworks compared to what other things existed at the time.

It's, by the way, another example of how the only good thing Facebook did was deny Google complete dominance.

We would still have a framework of the week like we do today. There was a new framework weekly before React and there are frameworks of the week after React. React just gave us one more way of showing text on a screen.

> React just gave us one more way of showing text on a screen.

Well, yes, but... its popularity is not completely accidental. It's good - even by today's standards, but certainly by the standards of the time.

In 2015 I was teaching that React was a lightweight library that simply did function state -> html, codebases were bug-free, snappy and easy to understand. And it was true compared to configuring jQuery listeners the unperformant way into a Rube Goldberg machine of cause and effect.

React was a godsend vs dealing with the Angular $digest loop

Without React, we might've just used Svelte.

NGL I like modern Angular more than React, but I never experienced v1 of AngularJS so I don't know how much of modern Angular is influenced by React.

I like that it's a framework with opinions vs React which is a "Library".

As someone working daily with React, I agree. And I wouldn’t consider it a Facebook product at all. The amount of work they offload to the community is substantial.