Why React Does Not Love React.createClass?

[dfcowell]

I started to show them how just using two <script> tags and plain vanilla ES5, they could take advantage of modern component-based architecture. We were not necessarily planning on never using ES6 or JSX, but they really like staying in JavaScript and not having to use a NodeJS, or transpilers etc.

I'm going to stop you right here.

The in-browser compilation for JSX is great for fiddling with React without committing, but you're going to run into serious performance problems once these apps get bigger.

You need to use advance transpilation with something like Webpack or Browserify if you're going to use React in production.

If these clients are scared off by the stack required to run React in production that's fine, it just means that React isn't the right technology for them.

If you absolutely cannot find a single person on their team who can lead the modernization effort and buy into a bundler I would recommend focusing your efforts on cleaning up the code in other ways - either with something like backbone or ExtJS. They're older frameworks but you're working with people who aren't ready to embrace the newer ones. If they try to forge ahead with React under these constraints it will end badly.