Advantages of using immutable.js over Object.assign or spread operators

Question

So far most of \"starter boilerplates\" and some posts about react / redux I\'ve seen encourage usage of immutable.js to address mutability. I personally rely on Object.as

Answer 1

It is not only about performance gains via persistent data structures. Immutability is highly desirable quality in itself, since it completely eliminates any bugs caused by accidental mutations. Plus, it's nice to have sane data structures with convenient API in Javascript, something actually usable, and immutable.js is way ahead of vanillla objects and arrays, even with recent additions of ES6 and ES7. It's like jQuery - it's so popular because it's API is really great and easy to use compared to vanilla DOM API (which is just a nightmare). Sure, you can try to stay immutable with vanilla objects, but then you have not to forget to Object.assign and array spread EVERY FREAKING TIME, and with immutable.js you simply can't go wrong, any mutations here are explicit