I'm legitimately curious. Can you point to a single actual source to cite "the React team made the change to hooks because of JS engine performance"? (and when you say "performance", you _are_ talking about literal instruction execution time / JIT behavior / etc, that sort of thing?)

I'm pretty deeply tied into the React ecosystem, and I honestly can't remember _ever_ seeing that mentioned as a justification.

If you can link me a reference with them saying that, I'd both be interested in reading it, but honestly surprised to see that stated at all.