The real cost of this complexity isn't the code itself - it's onboarding. Every new dev joining the project has to understand why a radio button needs 47 lines of JSX with Radix primitives, context providers, and styled variants.

I've watched teams spend weeks just getting comfortable with component library internals before they can be productive. Meanwhile the "simpler" vanilla approach might have taken an afternoon to build but takes 20 minutes to explain.

That said, if you're building something like Figma or Linear where you genuinely need the accessibility primitives and keyboard navigation that Radix provides, the complexity pays for itself. Most CRUD apps don't need it though.

> I've watched teams spend weeks just getting comfortable with component library internals

Would a good library allow developers to ignore internals and get on with higher-level stuff?

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