I probably shouldn’t care. I’m just not looking forward to the chaos of another full “turn” in JavaScript, akin to query->backbone or backbone->react.

Maybe I shouldn’t fear it. I’ve just yet to see an idea that feels valuable enough to move an entire ecosystem. Svelte, HTMX, etc… where is the “disruptive” idea that could compel everyone to leave React?

For Marko, that doesn't seem to be the case, but it also doesn't really make sense given the problems that Marko is trying to solve.

Another thing people might mean by "it's just JavaScript" is a much more subjective notion about how similar the overal syntax, control flow, etc. feels to whatever previous JavaScript experience the person has. This meaning is a lot harder to pin down, and in most cases reasonable people could disagree on what is and isn't "just JavaScript" according to this meaning. That said, I would tend to agree that React's templating uses normal JavaScript control flow and composition primitives more so than Marko.

      var ListComponent = () => {
        let count = 0, selected = null
        return {
          view: ({attrs: {items}}) =>
            m("div", [
              m("p", "Clicked: " + count + " times"),
              m("ul", items.map(item =>
                m("li", {
                  onclick: () => { count++; selected = item },
                  style: {cursor: "pointer", color: item === selected ? "blue" : "black"}
                }, item)
              )),
              selected && m("p", "Selected: " + selected)
            ])
        }
      }

  <MyComponent prop={value}></MyComponent>

  jsx(MyComponent, { prop: value })

What people mean when they say “React is just JavaScript” is…

1) JSX, more than any other templating system, is just HTML interleaved with JavaScript. It’s HTML, and anything between { and } is evaluated as JavaScript.

2) Inserting a React component’s “HTML tag” in your JSX is _actually_ the same as calling the JavaScript function. The HTML attributes are the function arguments. Yes, inside your function there can be state, and there can be contexts, and there are refs. But you get at all of those things by calling JavaScript functions.

Like,

      <b><MyComponent attr=“yes” /></b>

      <b>{MyComponent({ attr: “yes” })}</b>

I feel like too many people think “React is Just JavaScript” is some kind of lie people tell to make React sound cool.

It’s not a lie. There’s a _small_ amount of hand waving around the word “just” but the point is, it’s WAY smaller than what you need to explain the ways Svelte or Vue or Angular diverge from plain JavaScript.

<for ...>

In JSX I write JavaScript that returns JSX:

{data.map(node => <Element {...node} />)}

^ ----- JS ----^ ^ ------ JSX -------^

or

const elements = data.map(node => <Element {...node} />) ... <div>{elements}</div>

Really the most obscure syntax there is the splatting but it makes sense to you when you realize that JSX is just syntactic sugar for JS:

data.map(node => React.createElement(Element, { ...node }))

I like vue a lot more;

    <ul v-if={users}>
      <li v-for={some in users}>{some.name}
    </ul>

Also it cannot be understated: apis, language and tooling are miles ahead better they were a decade ago or more.