I'm looking forward to seeing more implementations of the React ideas! I see the Virtual DOM as mostly a necessary performance hack to let developers - as you say - think of views in a more functional fashion.
React proves that if you try to make as much as possible of your application referentially transparent (or "pure" if that can be said about an UI), you avoid a lot of complexity.
React proves that if you try to make as much as possible of your application referentially transparent (or "pure" if that can be said about an UI), you avoid a lot of complexity.