React is simple while it's extremely complex at the same time; the library's concept is actually not that complicated and the API is relatively small. A lot of

React is simple while it's extremely complex at the same time; the library's concept is actually not that complicated and the API is relatively small. A lot of developers struggle when it comes to architecting, though. I know many "enterprise developers" that favor Angular (and Angular 2) because of the "out-of-the-box" character and the magic that happens under the hood. Even with years of front-end experience I see these engineers fail at creating a reliable, documented and structured architecture. I guess, that's because they don't have time, budget or are no longer used to fiddle around and explore third-party projects (which is actually sad). That is, getting started with Angular (or Vue, I expect) is easier and you will get something together faster. I expect the reason why React is so popular to be the mix you describe - although "templating" is a bit off, because JSX isn't templating in the PHP or JSF way. From my personal point of view I can say, that I never regret the decision to switch to React (from Angular/Backbone.js). Especially the simple structuring (basically a component tree) is incredible simple compared to what you had in Angular 1. I am leading two projects with six digit LOC in the front-end and it is a pleasure to see how quickly new member can contribute, how clear the architecture is. Because there's no magic at all. But that's all very personal, opinions differ greatly and I even know one developer who loves Angular 2. But he also has to work with Hibernate in the backend and compared to that everything is great - just kidding ;) --- Edit: I have read Fielding's paper for my B. Sc. thesis a couple of times and it's a great piece work. Should be a mandatory lecture for a lot of fields.