I haven't used React, but maybe he's referring to this: "Composite Component functions can no longer be called directly - they must be wrapped with React.createFactory first. This is handled for you when using JSX."

As the others have stated, react requires me to add this line: var MyComponent = React.createFactory(require('MyComponent'));

It's not a huge deal, but I keep getting this sense that jsx is strongly tied to react and this reaffirms that they are going to keep it that way. I do trust the react team still, but it makes me weary of future releases.

(I'll re-link to sebmarkbage's answer here in case people see this post and get confused: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8523876)

In short, this is somewhat of a transition step for the (imo) even better way of specifying your render with pure vanilla js collections. This goes in the opposite direction of what you're worried about. You can view `createElement/Factory` as the stepping stone, with the _additional_ benefit of allowing you to use es6 classes very soon. Smaller API surface and + using more js features rather than library-specific ones; what's not to like? =)

As for your worries about JSX: yes, it does come from React since the beginning. But we've taken an extra step of making it clear that this doesn't have to be React-specific: http://facebook.github.io/jsx/. You can plug this in CoffeeScript. If not, see my previous point.

His concerns about JSX are the opposite of those you site, I believe; him (and I) want to use React without JSX whatsoever.

As long as we can always do something like

    div className: 'foo', 
      span className: 'bar'
      Custom className: 'baz'

I think we'll be reasonably happy. But nobody likes feeling like a second-class citizen =)