I politely disagree. JQuery is (largely) syntactic sugar over the built in node selection engine and various CSS properties, animations, etc, that are built in and very much a part of normal everyday browser javascript. React is something else entirely, and creates a system parallel to the DOM rather than simply using the DOM the way it was intended. You have to understand the DOM and how it is typically used before you jump to something like React, and a great way to do that is vanilla js with a little JQuery sprinkled in. There is less friction this way, and it demonstrates the impetus for separating javascript from HTML and not using selectors for everything. Otherwise you miss the point of why React is good, and you run the risk of misusing (or in the very least under-appreciating) it. People with all this background still often make terrible React apps, so imagine how bad the people who don't even understand what or why React is will do.