As others point out, this is provably false. React&#x27;s use of a virtual DOM is merely an optimization. The same principle is used in many other areas: Double-buffered rendering in graphics engines, for example.<p>Facebook clearly chose HTML syntax (JSX) to be familiar with how developers are used to interact with HTML, thus lowering the learning curve. As others point out, the JSX syntax is still beneficial when <i>not</i> targeting the DOM, as in the case of React Native. JSX is just a preprocessor, and no different than writing, say, Mustache templates.<p>What React brings to the table is a framework for declarative UI components. Functionally, React components are no different than, say, Backbone views (indeed it&#x27;s quite trivial to port a backbone view to a React component), but the data flow principles promoted by React (unidirectional MVC, immutability, declarativity, discrete state transitions) are different, and somewhat novel in the UI&#x2F;MVC space.<p>React is definitely not just a &quot;patch&quot;. If you think that, you&#x27;ve clearly not studied it closely enough.