[tyleregeto]

I think it is a bit of an exaggeration, but not entirely inaccurate. I am currently working on a large application UI re-write, we've moved to React, and JQuery was included from day one. The entire application uses JQuery exactly once as of today. (We're leveraging $.ajax) React solves a lot of the same issues JQuery does. We didn't purposely try avoiding JQuery, we just haven't needed it so far. That's a major change.

[jdub]

Check out superagent for all your $.ajax-replacing needs. :-)

https://github.com/visionmedia/superagent

[deanotron]

I agree that React and all the sweetness it contains does have this effect when working on a large - or simply dynamic - application.

But all of the benefits of the React Virtual DOM don't really come into play if the content is static (like most WordPress sites). If no data is changing, you don't need observables to automatically update views, and the built in underscore.js templating will do a fine job.