THE HISTORY OF REACT THROUGH CODE

Summary from the TLDR Web Dev newsletter

React started at Facebook in 2011 as "FaxJS" (later "FBolt"). Jordan Walke created it to solve problems with the company's existing BoltJS framework. Throughout its changes, React has maintained API consistency, from early innovations like JSX (which allowed HTML-like syntax in JavaScript for better performance, security, and debugging) to modern features, all guided by a coherent design philosophy.