[dlwj]

IMO React is popular because it forces people to understand MVC. I've actually never seen a Backbone app where views render based on the model. It's too easy to just ram in jQuery in the render function. A lot of new frameworks just try to reduce Backbone's boilerplate of manual model-view event binding in different ways, dirty watching, virtual DOM, etc...

Even flux is basically organized pub/sub. Instead of shouting out what you're doing, you're logging your actions in a logbook. Also, instead of arbitrary actions, you can only combine certain pre-approved actions. It's a natural extension from using globals (too messy) to shouting out your intent while basically using globals (too noisy, still kinda messy) to what I've described above. (still kinda messy, but can be traced and unit tested easily)

Flux/Redux and whatever still doesn't help you solve problems that truly reduce complexity like how to organize scope or what abstractions to use.

There are tons of good frameworks out there, and it's rather disappointing to me that people don't realize that the basics are the same and insist on everyone jumping on the same bandwagon (that just happens to be supported by a rich large company).