Comment by danenania

Modularity or componentization as you call it (I like that! :P) is definitely one of React's main advantages. But I'd say just as important is that it acts as a trojan horse, essentially, to get people using the "good parts" of functional programming without having to understand FP deeply.

Just like React encourages components, it also encourages immutable data, one-way data flow, functional reactivity, and thinking in terms of state machines, even if you aren't necessarily familiar with that terminology.

All this stuff makes building a complex UI far more manageable and helps to avoid common pitfalls.