It became the most popular in the landscape where all kinds of other frameworks existed. Because nothing beats immediate-mode-style API in terms of code clarity.
This is not React these days at all. Maybe when it was just an actually useful library. Not a hope now.
> It became the most popular in the landscape where all kinds of other frameworks existed
It became popular because it was simple, when it was simple. Then they did what all JS developers do. Find a problem for a solution.
Hooks are very non obvious / full of gotchas, and made react code no longer "just javascript".