&gt;  A really key one being that React effectively handles the rendering tree directly, and can therefore do high-level manipulation and performance work on it, whereas Windows paint messages forced the windows themselves to handle all of their state diffing and painting issues.<p>That is a big difference. I think we should pay more attention to things like who-owns-what when we&#x27;re thinking about the structure of our applications. It&#x27;s a bit glib to, as the author of the piece does, say &quot;oh well there&#x27;s diffing here, and Windows had diffing too, so they&#x27;re the same&quot;. Differences like this, well, make all the difference.