I think this is a very popular opinion.

A lot of people just wanted slight improvements like composable html files, and a handful of widgets that have a similar api. And for a long time it just wasn't worth the hassle to do anything other than react-create-app even if it pulled in 100x more than what people needed or even wanted.

But stuff has gotten a lot better, es6 has much better, web-components... are there, css doesn't require less/sass. It's pretty reasonable to just have a site with just vanilla tech. It's part of why htmx is as popular as it is.