> One thing that strikes me is that years ago everybody was excited about ES5 finally adding classes, and now everything seems to be moving away from classes.

For me the key advantage is much less boilerplate, readability and portability. The problem with `Stateless` components up until the introduction of hooks is that if you wanted state you had to write your component as a class so you ended up with components written in two totally different syntaxes with one being much more heavy on boilerplate.

The last key advantage i see is it brought the "React Components" way of sharing to logic. Previously every piece of logic you shared had to be connected to a react component, so you ended up with many "Providers" that were just a div with logic. Now with Context and Hooks you can easily transport that logic without the use of a Provider (well you still need one with Context but that a slightly different story).