[brundolf]

To my mind React is a couple different things:

- A VDOM (a library that lets you construct a virtual-dom, and then reconciles it with the previous one, and patches the real DOM accordingly)

- A state management/reactivity system (state hooks, effects, etc, and really also class components and their state/lifecycle)

- A framework which ties the above two together into a cohesive package for building web UIs

For me, the term "VDOM" only refers to that first point; i.e. you could combine a VDOM library with some other stuff to make a React-like framework

That could just be me, though