JavaScript gives you the raw material; React gives you a way to describe what the interface should look like for any given state, and lets the library work out how to get there.
Where JavaScript is the language, React is a library built on top of it, released by Facebook and now maintained across a huge open ecosystem — its defining idea is “declarative” UI: instead of writing step-by-step instructions for how to update a webpage when data changes, a developer describes what the interface should look like for a given state, and React computes the difference and applies it. That shift is why it displaced older, more imperative approaches to building interactive web applications so thoroughly.
The academic literature on React specifically is thin and mostly practitioner-survey work rather than foundational computer science — an honest lower tier, similar to other single-framework entries in this Lexicon.
🔗 Related Concepts
Source: Komperla, V. et al. “React: A detailed survey,” International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2022.