The #1 reason React works for me is that the UI and code are in the same file. It's so easy to go back and refactor changes when everything is right there. The natural composability you get from that over time is such a huge win in productivity and major wins for team scalability. The one-way data flow is honestly just a natural outgrowth of that architecture.

WPF and its sister frameworks, Silverlight and UWP all promote this disconnected way to develop the UI. Create a XAML file that then needs to be carefully crafted in a way that hooks up to the code class files. It was initially sold as an idea that designers would build the XAML and the engineers would work on the code. They even released a mini-adobe lite suite marketed to designers.

UWP in its latest iteration seems to acknowledge XAML's shortcomings. They introduced a new new UI foundational framework call the VisualLayer (aka DirectComposition). It reminds me a lot of iOS's CoreAnimation framework.