Why do you use React?

I love working with React. The reason is simple: it allows me to easily create whatever I like. It's powerful, extensible, and I can create simple apps really fast. I can easily connect to any API and play around with data or I can set up my own Firebase instance and play around. I can easily add delightful animations and micro-interactions.

Why use it over other build tools? No particular reason. You need to have a tool for every job. And I found React to be a great tool for a lot of the jobs. I simply learned to work with React first, I loved it and I keep going in order to master it. I never had the need to consider other tool or compare it to other tools. It's enough for whatever I'm doing.

The best way of learning it? Complete a simple free tutorial and find yourself a good personal project to work and experiment on. Maybe connect to an API and see what you can do with data.

For example, my music collection site was my first project and I've learned a lot while working on it: adrians-music-collection.netlify.com/

I use React because:

• I can lazy-load components and services based on where they are in the navigation. I can just have a huge navigation tree with dozens of nested pages, and just cut a branch and say "this branch of the navigation will only be loaded if I need it". In Angular I have to create NgModules and move files and have dependencies load in a main module which might not be present in other stuff or whatever.
• Hot-reload (saving a file, the code gets updated and changes appear on the screen without having to refresh the page) works like a charm
• Can reuse mobile components in web pages.
• Data can (or should) only go one way
• Higher Order components
• No inheritance. Only composition
• React Context lets me detect the background color of a parent component, allowing me to change text color on runtime if it doesn't have enough contrast. Really useful for dark theme switch while using an app or website.
• Debugging errors in components is super easy. Because React is just a thin View layer

I genuinely want to know why everyone is loving React. I don't know quite enough about it really. So, I'm asking this so I can make the decision or not in spending the time and money to learn it.