Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You're encouraged to keep state only in top-level components Doesn't state grow unmanageably large for complex GUIs? > React is definitely much more functional than other/older approaches to GUIs I'm not sure about that. Take a look, both projects are much older: https://github.com/dotnet/reactive https://reactiveui.net/
> Doesn't state grow unmanageably large for complex GUIs? Yes, and there are various ways to make this less of a problem. Still, React generally favors explicitly passing props down the component hierarchy, keeping the actual UI bits pure functions and composing them in various ways that is typical of FP. > I'm not sure about that. Take a look, both projects are much older: https://github.com/dotnet/reactive https://…
On the lower level, FP approach indeed sometimes causes much cleaner architecture, even for GUI code.
My point is, there’s no good alternatives at higher levels, where you want to build complex systems by combining components developed by different people/companies.
> and even be popular because they're less OO in nature.
That’s debatable. I don’t think the main reasons why React is popular are technical ones. Facebook is popular, and half year ago it’s market cap exceeded $600B. It’s $392B now but still it’s a huge company with 2.2B monthly active users. Many people want to achieve such success and view their technology as a silver bullet.
P.S. I’d like to add that OOP and FP are almost completely orthogonal. Here’s a good article about OOP in FP languages: https://medium.com/@gaperton/let-me-start-from-the-less-obvi... And many traditionally OOP languages adopted a lot of FP stuff: C#, JS, to lesser extent even C++ have now a lot to offer for functional-style programming.