React was literally first created in ML out of the author's dislike of MVC, who preferred functional programming and immutability[0]. For a long time, react aspired for its future to be in ReasonML.
Hooks came as no surprise to anyone who paid attention, as the recommended way to write components since at least 2016 was in the stateless functional style whenever possible, and many of us used recompose[1] to simulate hooks long before their introduction.
[0] https://github.com/reactiflux/q-and-a/blob/master/jordan-wal...
[1] https://github.com/acdlite/recompose
