Jordan Walke is an American software engineer who created React at Facebook. His work on component-based UI development with a virtual DOM transformed how web applications are built.
Creating React
Walke developed React at Facebook starting in 2011 to address challenges with the company’s complex user interfaces. He was influenced by XHP (a PHP extension for components) and functional programming concepts.
Key Insights
React’s design reflected several key insights:
- UIs should be declarative, not imperative
- Components should be composable like functions
- A virtual DOM could enable efficient updates
- One-way data flow simplifies reasoning about state
Open Sourcing
React was open-sourced at JSConf US in 2013. Initial reception was skeptical—JSX seemed to violate separation of concerns. But as developers tried it, React’s benefits became apparent.
ReasonML
After React, Walke worked on Reason, a syntax for OCaml that could compile to JavaScript. This reflected his interest in bringing functional programming concepts to mainstream development.
Philosophy
Walke’s work demonstrates how ideas from functional programming—immutability, pure functions, declarative code—can improve mainstream software development without requiring developers to learn entirely new paradigms.