FWIW I've been writing UIs using plain JavaScript and the DOM API for like 15 years and at a certain scale, I always ended up building an ad-hoc framework or being disgruntled when I had to reach for any of the pre-React UI frameworks whose APIs and approaches I didn't like. React changes this, nowadays I either start with pure DOM and then rewrite to React or just start with React. I see a lot of hate online for React these days and I agree with probably 99 % of it, but the problem in my eyes is not React itself, but the ecosystem that spurred around it. If you stick to just React and take some care with your craft, React is a joy to use IME.

Not everything needs to be a SPA. I genuinely believe that the web would've been a much better place today on most important metrics (performance, simplicity, accessibility etc.) if this SPA shift would've never happened. The opportunity cost seems massive to me.

Personally, I like to look at the source for a page. And that, for anything React, winds up being useless (<go-suck-an-egg-because-EVERYTHYING-is-loaded-dynamically/>). I find React very hard to debug whenever anything doesn't work as expected.

Hard feelings here. I like react and have to work with it, still it is all insanely wrong.

The best approach I've found so far is egui , and I hope people are moving that direction. Draw whole frame, collect events, process, update internal state.

I work on a React based web app in my Day Job and have genuinely enjoyed it.

That said, it always feels like so much boilerplate to get up and running for a greenfield project (and things like NextJS or even TanStack Start add a lot of things that might be overkill for a simple web app).

For some vibe coded side projects with Claude, I’ve been working with just using handlebars templates with Express and it has been pretty glorious!

I don’t think I’d recommend building a complex web app this way, but for some mild JS interactivity, form submission, etc, handlebars works.

Bonus: I find it much easier to get 100 across the board on Lighthouse scores this way.

I came to really appreciate React over time.

My initial objections were: (a) circa 2006 I was making very demanding RIAs such as knowledge graph editors and GIS decision support software and I've yet to see any modern framework that is as good as what I was using then (not in JS but rather GWT and Silverlight w/ the same async comms) and (b) the React model is not a 100% match for the form-based applications that we usually write with it (but boy do I love react-hook-form)

React is like the code in Graham's On Lisp [1] in that functional programming is used to create a sort of DSL. There are a lot of ways to implement reactivity that usually require a special interpreter (spreadsheets) or compiler (Svelte). React's system does show seams (you really need to be on top of identity and equality) but it is remarkably simple.

React shines, in my mind, for things that aren't form applications. For instance, VR applications with AFrame -- it's somewhere between VRML and Unity. I am working on a (mainly) heart rate variability biofeedback application [2] and it is so easy to make dashboards that display real-time metrics as well as Poincare sections and time series. That is, I can slap together a few data processing functions and widgets and make a new dashboard with new metrics and charts or new sensors. One goal is to get it working on a tablet in a two player version.

The disadvantage of React is that it does not work so well for highly dynamic layouts. In my case I have a library of functions to "fetch" the data stream and put them into the top of the component (may even package as hooks) and then put the layout together with JSX. I'd like to have a version where the user can drag and drop the components to make a custom layout and the system figures out the dependencies for the data fetching, preparation and processing like the things I made in 2006 and that kind of application with a dynamic layout (think programs like Photoshop with lots of different little widgets and property sheets) wants a different approach to reactivity.

[1] use of macros in that book is a red herring, the one example in it where you really need macros is when he is implementing cooperative multitasking, a feature that Python and Javascript already have -- most examples from that book as with Norvig's Lisp book can be coded up just fine with

[2] see https://github.com/paulhoule/VulpusVision it might "just work" if you npm install, npm run dev, and look at it in Chrome and connect with a Polar H10 or other BT monitor