We would still have a framework of the week like we do today. There was a new framework weekly before React and there are frameworks of the week after React. React just gave us one more way of showing text on a screen.
In 2015 I was teaching that React was a lightweight library that simply did function state -> html, codebases were bug-free, snappy and easy to understand. And it was true compared to configuring jQuery listeners the unperformant way into a Rube Goldberg machine of cause and effect.
