What React Actually Is
React is a JavaScript library—not a framework—developed by Meta for building user interfaces. The distinction matters: React handles UI rendering but doesn't include routing, HTTP clients, or form validation out of the box. Your teams will need to integrate third-party libraries like React Router, which adds architectural decisions to the procurement process.
Three technical concepts define React:
Component-based architecture: UIs are built from reusable, independent pieces that manage their own state. A typical enterprise application might have hundreds of components—headers, forms, data tables—each with its own logic.
Virtual DOM: React maintains an in-memory representation of the UI and batches updates to the actual DOM. This diffing algorithm is why React applications feel fast, but it also means performance monitoring requires understanding this abstraction layer.
Unidirectional data flow: Data moves parent-to-child, making state changes predictable. When debugging production issues, this constraint helps—but it also means developers need to lift state up through component hierarchies, which introduces boilerplate.
The Enterprise Context
React extends beyond web browsers through React Native, which matters if you're consolidating mobile and web development teams. Facebook, Instagram, and Netflix run React in production, though market share data against Vue.js and Angular remains scarce in public sources.
JSX—React's HTML-like syntax embedded in JavaScript—requires build tooling and transpilation. If your enterprise still runs legacy systems without modern CI/CD pipelines, this adds infrastructure overhead.
What The Vendor Won't Tell You
State management is flexible, which sounds good until your team debates Redux vs. Context API vs. custom hooks for six weeks. React's "just a library" positioning means these decisions fall on your architects.
The claim that React is "easy to learn" depends entirely on JavaScript proficiency. For teams migrating from Java-based server rendering, the learning curve is real.
The Real Question
React works. The question is whether its flexibility matches your team's capability to make good architectural decisions, or whether a more opinionated framework like Next.js serves you better. Worth noting: Next.js is built on React, which tells you something about how the industry is thinking about this.
If your developers are already shipping React applications, this isn't a decision—it's inherited architecture. The conversation should be about guardrails, not whether to adopt it.