It seems like they never really gave react a real chance. although react is just a view render, to really get its red line performance requires going all in. I think it would have been worth it. a unidirectional data flow is worth the pain. It's so much easier to design something that only ever has to "rerender".

React isn't a magic bullet without using shouldComponentUpdate, and shouldComponentUpdate really works best with immutable data. Immutable data works best all in... See where this all in keeps going? Basically atom didn't wanr react to dictate their entire app and dictate how the plugins would all have to be rendered.