[zpao]

What this actually returns is a lightweight DOM-like structure. The framework then uses that to make modifications to the real DOM. In the case of the first render that's going to mean setting innerHTML of something. After that though, if you re-render this component with a different value for props.name, React won't re-render the <div> in the DOM, but will instead just modify it's contents.

From the article: > The data returned from render is neither a string nor a DOM node -- it's a lightweight description of what the DOM should look like.

Like @thezilch said, the syntax is JSX, which is pre-processed into runnable JS.