WordPress engineers need to grow up and accept the fact that they need to learn new tools. With that comes and expectation that these new tools include JavaScript and their associated frameworks ( React / Vue ). React does teach sound JavaScript principles, and it is not harder to grasp than any other framework. Those that feel it’s more difficult are unfamiliar or scared of working with JavaScript.

Being a WordPress engineer, tasks us with not just being PHP dev or a theme developer, but a full stack engineer. This means we should be comfortable in dealing with all aspects of a proper WordPress install, from the server / database / PHP and frontend. Anything else in this day and age is sloppy. The days of simply installing a theme and calling yourself a dev are long past. Grow up or find a new line of work. Your clients demand more of you.

Failure to grasp these concepts is one reason WordPress engineers get a bad name among the community.

Vue basically took the same concepts of AngularJS without really adding anything new. React built upon those concepts. React coupled with Redux gives us a clear cut way to handle state changes.

Sure Vue gives us a nice way to write HTML, and CSS in their appropriately “named” files, but React gives us a way to write testable and abstractable code and components.

The argument about Facebook being a tech giant and WordPress hitching a wagon to it is superfluous as far as I am concerned. Any company adopting WordPress or Automattic as part of their app / web solution is doing the same thing. When you “own” 25% of the internet, you are just as much of a tech giant as other large silicon valley companies. Secondly, any person that adds a FB login /Like button to their WP theme is just as much “hitching their wagon” to a large tech giant. You still adopt the same license agreement regardless of what pieces of FB you wish to use in your code.

All the same, WordPress failing to adopt React feels like WordPress failing to cycle out older versions of PHP. The idea that we should continue to support EOL libraries, because adoption is poor ( ie, too difficult to learn ) if we don’t is a horrible argument. If we support tried and true libraries, the web world will follow and adopt accordingly. Yes, by adopting React, more developers will learn JavaScript.