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This offers a good explanation for why the most popular options are generally the ones that developers choose, but not why the thing that is currently popular shifts as fast as it does.

Why did React take the limelight while Angular fell out of favor? What caused that shift in what is popular?

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My personal experience with this was that Angular 2 was announced, which was completely non backwards compatible. So there were a bunch of people that

1) Needed to rewrite their code

2) Distrusted Angular to be stable

React had a philosophy of small reusable components and incremental upgrade. This is a particularly attractive idea for people experiencing the above. I think this is probably part of the shift in popularity.

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