The sense I get is that the original React model has some pretty significant complexities, especially around shouldRender and prop / state analysis, and hooks p

The sense I get is that the original React model has some pretty significant complexities, especially around shouldRender and prop / state analysis, and hooks present a big improvement on that. I don’t think that the class-vs-function divide is the fundamental reason for the problems with the old model or the improvements with the new model. Rather, I think the learnings from the original approach informed the system and resulted in a step forward. I find that once I need to manage a nontrivial amount of state, the functional model really feels wrong — useContext, I’m looking at you! And I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with another turn of the crank that introduces a class-based (or prototype-based) approach with a better set of abstractions at some point down the line.