This is how I remember things as well. The Virtual DOM was a huge improvement compared to other contemporary frameworks because it consolidated multiple changes into a single DOM operation.
For one thing, all the frameworks at the time we’re doing 2 way bindings. Which meant that the smallest change could end up triggering a bunch of computeds and observables, to the point where any change would trigger a bunch of re renders.
React bundled all of those into a single rerender. Further, and I may be mistaken about this, react helped dispel 2 way binding and show that 2 way binding was a performance and reasoning disaster. If that was the case, I’d suppose eliminatin g 2 way binding also likely played a large role in the performance improvements which may potentially have been incorrectly attributed to the VDom.
To me it was not only that as I didn't do games or highly interactive UI's where DOM updates would really matter but it freed me from the burden of ad-hoc updating with jquery as everybody was used to. Unless you had some framework or had invented ways to centrally store state chances are your code was all over the place.
I tried 2-way binding in ExtJS and it seemed to work well at first then I started adding more and more binds to the component and at certain point performance just tanked.
And it was after I started with React already so I just didn't bother to investigate, issue actually was some kind of loop being formed and things aborting due to hitting limits. Which I guess means I used it somewhat incorrectly but I never had that issue with react.
Well written. From my memory I remember situations trying to isolate cascade of rerenderes in backbonejs caused by multiple isolated event handlers. Also state used to problems, before state management libraries existed. And actually messenger (built in) was first app that was written in react, because it was plagued by several bugs, like not showing/resetting unread message count correctly...
For one thing, all the frameworks at the time we’re doing 2 way bindings. Which meant that the smallest change could end up triggering a bunch of computeds and observables, to the point where any change would trigger a bunch of re renders.
React bundled all of those into a single rerender. Further, and I may be mistaken about this, react helped dispel 2 way binding and show that 2 way binding was a performance and reasoning disaster. If that was the case, I’d suppose eliminatin g 2 way binding also likely played a large role in the performance improvements which may potentially have been incorrectly attributed to the VDom.