[brightball]

I'm not an expert in this area, but the impression that I've gotten from the React front is that one of the benefits and reason for traction it isn't a framework as much as a very good way to handle the view layer that's flexible enough to let people take liberties with the rest of their application design...and the way that it handles it works very smoothly with server side rendering as well.

Much like jQuery being able to work with other JS libraries smoothly was a big selling point, React seems to be providing a modular approach that's flexible enough to work with many of the more opinionated options out there without having to dictate everything about the application.

One of the biggest churn points around JS frameworks wanting to do things this way or that way, full single page app or hybrid server side / client side, integrate to existing site or build from scratch.

End of the day, the browser is the view layer. Most of the other frameworks that try to make it significantly more than that are always going to lose when being applied to existing systems or server side heavy systems.

The React approach is basically just simplifying and removing pain points. It's easier for Rails to define some standards on the server and database side because the server side is where the core logic of every application lives. You're not going to try to apply Rails to an existing application, so it doesn't have to worry about fighting that battle. That is a major consideration of client side code, which is why you're seeing more wide spread usage of React. It fits more use cases instead of trying to be Rails in the browser.