React is a set of open source tools for building user interfaces. React was open sourced by Facebook, and includes libraries for creating interfaces on the web (ReactJS) and on mobile devices (React Native).

React was released during a time when there was not a dominant frontend JavaScript library. Backbone, Angular, and other JavaScript frameworks were all popular, but there was not any consolidation across the frontend web development community. Before React came out, frontend developers were fractured into different communities for the different JavaScript frameworks.

After Facebook open sourced React, web developers began to gravitate towards the framework for its one-way data flow and its unconventional style of putting JavaScript and HTML together in a format called JSX. As React has grown in popularity, the React ecosystem has developed network effects. In many cases, the easiest way to build a web application frontend is to compose together open source React components.

After seeing the initial traction, Facebook invested heavily into React, creating entire teams within the company whose goal was to improve React. Dan Abramov works on the React team at Facebook and joins the show to talk about how the React project is managed and his vision for the project.

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