[MrPatan]

Indeed. React was a welcome innovation because it enabled V=f(S). That's it.

The vDom was fast enough that it made re-rendering your view on every state change possible.

Now you don't have to worry about rendering, you describe your components as pure functions and you're done with that side of things, now you "only" have to worry about the state of your app.

Seeing comments here wondering "How am I supposed to use jQuery with React otherwise?" is baffling and disheartening.