It isn't even that new, in terms of approach... a LOT of game and simulation would work with state driven rendering... each frame is rendered against the current state. Similar workflows to React+Redux were in pretty broad use, the tools just brought it to web development... from there, React as a model for UI abstraction became more popular for other applications outside web use. It makes a lot of sense.
If you already understand the idea behind state driven updates, you're already writing better React than the majority of folks using it. React made it easy enough to write working UIs without having a clue what's actually happening, when, and why. (which is also why there's a never-ending stream of stackoverflow questions about why obvious state mutations don't immediately kick in)