React isn't "new". It was deployed on FB in 2011, and open sourced in 2013. (2006 for jQuery). 4-5 years is plenty of time to develop a rich ecosystem of libraries ... just recall jQuery circa 2010-2011.

I certainly wouldn't want to build a mobile app these days with jQuery, since that would generally mean more of a pure Cordova app. (I do think that Ionic however would be a great option depending on the use case)

Cordova or Ionic is perfect for those that don’t care about the user experience.

Or those who have considered the options, advantages and drawbacks, and decided Cordova/Ionic is the best tool for the particular job.

Since React isn't the only component based framework, I think there are easier ways to manage and reason about a front end. In fact React works well in certain cases, sure. It's just that any philosophies or paradigms that it introduced are in almost every framework now as an addition, see: NgRedux or Infernal.js.

Personally, React wasn't an easy shift coming from an angular background; I just felt the state flow was cumbersome compared to 2 way data-binding; although some people swear by it and say it's the only way. I think the real take away is that there's plenty of options to choose from.

It's not far off to imagine that React may not be the flavor of the year at some point.

I’m curious what about the state flow you find cumbersome? Are you talking about using just pure React with prop passing everywhere or something like Redux that lets you subscribe components to specific state changes?

Disagree - there's a huge thriving ecosystem of React components and libraries available, and many of them are mature.

I haven't thought about comparing React to jQuery, but I think that's good point. React is probably an equally important and ubiquitous stepping stone of a library for JS. Love it or hate it, its a new standard.

Getting into it pretty much guarantees a certain level of productivity and community support.