Virtual DOM has its charms. React is sort of synonymous with Virtual DOM, but isn't the only way to do Virtual DOM and it's probable other Virtual DOM front end

Virtual DOM has its charms. React is sort of synonymous with Virtual DOM, but isn't the only way to do Virtual DOM and it's probable other Virtual DOM front ends will continue to be built whether or not React goes away. At very least, Virtual DOM will survive at WASM borders if nowhere else. There's still talk of making it a lot easier to bind the DOM across WASM borders, but even then overhead may always be a strange trade-off making it useful to just pass a full Virtual DOM object to JS code on the other side of the border and letting it diff/patch. Most of the WASM-based front ends I've seen are generally some form of Virtual DOM under the hood. That said, yes, the possibilities in doing more "direct DOM manipulation" again and "Vanilla DOM" are exciting and it is a bit of flip from the brief period when major React fans thought Virtual DOM was the greatest. I've been seeing some cool results in my own "non-Virtual DOM" projects.