How React's 2013 Virtual DOM Pitch Evolved Into Today's Official Documentation

When React launched in 2013, it entered a web landscape dominated by jQuery, Backbone, and AngularJS, where manual or full-sweep DOM updates were standard practice. React's core promise was a declarative UI model backed by a Virtual DOM that would minimize costly browser rendering operations. However, the simplified marketing message led to widespread developer confusion between React's in-memory calculations and actual browser screen updates. To address this, the React team overhauled their official documentation, breaking the rendering process into three explicit steps: Trigger, Render, and Commit. They even introduced the term 'painting' to clearly distinguish browser screen updates from React's internal reconciliation work.