[debaserab2]

> I hesitate to bring up a cliché, but it's starting to feel like React is the new jQuery

I don't understand this comparison. jQuery extended the existing DOM API to make it more user friendly and made it cross browser compatible (an incredible thing in it's age). React does nothing like this - it brings a completely different concept to designing user interfaces that has nothing to do with the DOM api.

If anything, I see hooks as a response to the community that was installing React+Redux(mobx/whatever global state manager library is flavor of the week) by default. This feature makes it possible to use React as more of a one stop solution, which I definitely welcome.

> I'm already trying to anticipate what comes after React, in which case I want my code to depend on the smallest possible API surface area.

That's a fools errand. The code I wrote 10 years ago that relies on jQuery still relies on jQuery (and guess what -- it still works the same as it did when I wrote it!). And the code I wrote 5 years ago that relies on angular1 is still in production (and guess what -- it's fast and incredibly bug free because it's had so long to work out the kinks). Despite these frameworks no longer being fashionable, they still serve in production environments fantastically.

You don't have to rewrite your user interface code just because something else came along. You can embrace the positives of the library or framework that was being used at the time you wrote that code and create a rock solid application. Your goal shouldn't be to write code that depends on the smallest API surface because good code that correctly uses a well written API (which both jQuery and react are) will not be hard to maintain down the road regardless.