Why React?

Question

I am about 3/4 through a react course and although it seems interesting I haven’t yet seen what React can do that vanilla javascript can’t. It certainly isn’t easier than vanilla JavaScript so can someone please explain what the point is?
I think the explanation was supposed to be that it is faster as it just needs to render the individual component but I don’t understand as when we use js you don’t need to rerender the whole page every time you click on a hamburger button or type something in a text box.

Answer 1

There's a ton that React does for you under the hood without the developer noticing.

Security, event responses, maintaining application state, and SPA capabilities are some of the first things that come to my mind.