I find it's way easier to build crappy React apps than an HTML-first approach.

An "old school" Ruby on Rails/Symfony/Django app, with templates, usual get/post forms etc, frames you and pushes you in using the standards and relying on browser default behaviors.

In JS-heavy apps, it's as easy to code normal `button` elements as it is to code clickable `div` elements. But with the divs you just forget to handle keyboard nav, proper element roles, etc. It's easy to create fake links, not relying on `a` tags, using an internal JS router that doesn't expose URLs, doesn't handle middle click mouse, for no particular reasons.

In less JS-heavy contexts, the easiest way to do is to use proper HTML so you are less inclined to mess up.

Even on codebases that use a decent framework like Next.js that handles those for you on paper, it's often we see people not very aware of the benefits of using proper semantics and standard behaviors, and you easily end up with web apps with poor UX in the end.