We would still have a framework of the week like we do today. There was a new framework weekly before React and there are frameworks of the week after React. React just gave us one more way of showing text on a screen.

> React just gave us one more way of showing text on a screen.

Well, yes, but... its popularity is not completely accidental. It's good - even by today's standards, but certainly by the standards of the time.

In 2015 I was teaching that React was a lightweight library that simply did function state -> html, codebases were bug-free, snappy and easy to understand. And it was true compared to configuring jQuery listeners the unperformant way into a Rube Goldberg machine of cause and effect.

React was a godsend vs dealing with the Angular $digest loop

Without React, we might've just used Svelte.

NGL I like modern Angular more than React, but I never experienced v1 of AngularJS so I don't know how much of modern Angular is influenced by React.

I like that it's a framework with opinions vs React which is a "Library".