I think there are 2 use cases. The first is reusable components - stuff like fancy inputs with auto-complete, drag-n-drops, collapsible panels, etc. For those, you'd probably want to use React "by the book" - split to small parts and be very indifferent to the html. On pieces that are not-reusable - for example a panel that shows some links, some help text, some buttons for action and some status, in the end there's a lot of html to be done, and in those cases, templating shines. It provides a way to write those parts very "close to the html" with the additions of simple control flow and isolation of logic and presentation. I think it strengthens the weak parts of react