It&#x27;s no surprise that mutating data structures is cheap, and React&#x27;s virtual DOM doesn&#x27;t aim to solve expensive layout calculation.<p>What virtual DOM does is simplify application development by removing the concept of time, so the programmer doesn&#x27;t have to think about how to mutate the existing state to get to the new state.  It&#x27;s the cheapness of creating new virtual nodes that&#x27;s interesting [1], and quickly applying them to the DOM with diffing.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jsperf.com&#x2F;virtual-dom-vs-real-dom" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jsperf.com&#x2F;virtual-dom-vs-real-dom</a>