I have recently been brushing up on my React.js skills. When I first learned React I used classes and I ended up hating React. This time round I only focused on hooks and functional components. And now I appreciate React a lot more. But I got to thinking. React is written in vanilla javaScript. So in essence it is nothing more than vanilla javaScript that is forced to behave in a certain way until build time. Then after the build regular vanilla javaScript emerges? That got me wondering. But if React is written in vanilla javaScript, and it becomes something else during development, and then just ends up again as vanilla javaScript - then why do we need that something else? Does it magically generate far superior vanilla javaScript than can be coded by hand? Or is it just a tool to make it easier to write vanilla javaScript? Because all the tools that are available to React - like Rollup and Babel and npm packages galore - are also available to regular apps written in plain HTML, CSS and javaScript! And Es Modules, which is the core of React, is now native to all modern browsers. So much so that React basically just uses regular Es Modules as well. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS???