[tjsix]

I don't think anyone is saying people who know just enough jQuery NEED to know about React, just like jQuery, React is just another tool. To address your points though, React is "A javascript library for building user interfaces", it wasn't developed to be a tool to manage data flow patterns, it was built solely as a view library. Most people pick up jQuery as a means of manipulating their views/the dom so the target audience of both libraries as well as their use cases is very similar. Now I'm not saying the same thing will happen with React, but not too long ago people were saying the exact same thing about jQuery when it was introduced.

[moonchrome]

React has a significant learning curve and a different model from regular DOM. It has a significant cost over something like jQuery especially when you already know jQuery.

jQuery works just fine at small enough scale. Once you out-scale jQuery you will have problems that won't be solved just by using a different view library - you need to understand software engineering - which is why everyone who actually uses reacts also uses things like Flux, etc.

My point is jQuery works for what it's used, getting people to switch to React seems like a fad because "the cool kids are doing it".