>I think it's very hard to argue that React is effective or well designed.

This is a foolish take. React is the reason the modern web is as usable as it is. Anyone who contests otherwise is simply ignorant of web development history.

>(and even Netflix is moving away from React

They're not moving away from React, they're doing pure SSR with it. https://react.dev/reference/react-dom/server/renderToPipeabl...

You don't need the compiler client side. What level of confusion leads you to believe that? That's not even a detail about React, that's simply a mistake in how software works.

React has ALWAYS, by default, done SSR first and then hydrates state on the client. It's trivial, and always has been, to simply do SSR only if you so wish.

>But to implement it in React you have to go on a steep learning curve to learn about JSX, hooks, the component lifecycle, building the app for dev, packaging it for prod, and more.

I find it hard to take this characterization in good faith. If you have trouble learning about the component life cycle in React, I don't see how you have any hope of successfully building a production level application without any guard rails.

You will, without a singular doubt, simply get "it" wrong. Even with modern JS.

> This is a foolish take. React is the reason the modern web is as usable as it is

Theres at least one foolish take here Come on think of the 100s of comparable FE frameworks…