Author here. I actually glossed over some of the problems here, as the article was already getting quite long. In a trivial example like this, you&#x27;re right. If you do this to the entire page, though, it gets stickier. An additional problem is that you&#x27;re throwing away and rebuilding state that&#x27;s associated with the elements, such as event handlers. (Also, letting React do the actual DOM manipulation makes it easier to implement transitions, where a Virtual DOM element goes away now, but the real DOM element sticks around for a bit while it animates off.)<p>To be fair, I haven&#x27;t done actual benchmarks, and I&#x27;m basing this on the stated rationale for React. I&#x27;d be surprised if swapping out the DOM of most of the page wasn&#x27;t considerably slower more difficult to work with than what React does, though.