I too had a WTF moment when I first saw JSX but after seeing a bunch of videos from the FB team explaining the whole concept being React and Flux it just made

I too had a WTF moment when I first saw JSX but after seeing a bunch of videos from the FB team explaining the whole concept being React and Flux it just made so much sense. After playing around with it a little bit I have to admit it's so much better than anything else I tried (vanilla JS, jQuery, Backbone, Angular, Dojo). React (+ Flux) is possibly a great way to introduce people to web development since it avoids common pitfalls and really allows (forces?) you to think about what you are doing more clearly.