Andir

I wouldn't say I was "forced" to use JSX. I started out building React using only JavaScript notation to build the DOM (React.DOM.div, et al.) because I told myself that XML formatted text doesn't belong in my JavaScript. I then started to use JSX. It's a beautiful thing to get into if you give it more than a cursory glance. For one, readability is incredibly better with JSX and passing data becomes less of a chore.

And IE still doesn't (nor do they plan to) support declarative animation in SVGs. (SMIL) Someone there decided that script based animation is more robust so they just bypassed that capability. I think it's a terrible idea because you forego having tightly integrated SVG animation modules that can just be dropped in as needed.