React rabbit hole part 1

I watched a short doc on React’s origins and revisited Sophie Alpert’s 2013 post about Khan Academy’s question editor — one of the sparks for React’s early adoption. I’ve always been a bit wary of React, so I wanted to see if I could find a case where it really shines. Following her example roughly was interesting but impossible to reproduce exactly, and it made me realize how specific her case was (MathJax rendering).

Obvious use cases are the ones Facebook solved for themselves: the timeline, messaging, Instagram. It’s a good reminder that React solves particular problems, and not every website with some interactivity actually needs it.