As someone currently using Rails, I would say React is nothing like Rails. Rails is just magic everywhere, where as React feels very explicit about what it does.
What parts of Rails are magical to you? This is an exaggerated stereotype imo. Spring framework felt way more "magical" than whatever Rails is doing to me.
You can look at the Rails docs and it's all explained pretty clearly to me...
I went through a cycle of: study ruby -> start using rails -> seems magical -> realize you don't know ruby yet -> study more -> rails no longer feels magical. I suspect this is typical given that there is lot more to ruby than appears on the surface and rails heavily leverages the metaprogramming capabilities.
