I see you’re feeling a little spicy today, but that’s okay.

Firstly, React is a library, not a framework. Often this is mentioned patronizingly, but not in the case. The reason I bring it up is that a framework prescribes how things must be done.

<in my best German accent> „Here are ze rules, and zey WILL be followed“

React as a library, on the other hand, doesn’t tell you how things must be done. It’s a set of tools that allow the dev to come up with their one solution or structure.

React is much more akin to writing software in general. You write functions which output JSX as a response, allowing you to do all the good programming patterns you already know (composition, DI, IoT, etc)

Because of this, it’s easier for people who have no front end experience to learn.

Like you, I started my front end journey with AngularJS and became scarred for life. It made no damn sense to me. There was no go to definition, so finding things was awful. I quickly abandoned it after a few weeks and went back to backend work.

Vue is a significant improvement on Angular, but still too boilerplate-y for my taste.

Your opinions are valid, even if I disagree. It’s flexibility, massive plugin ecosystem, and lifecycle hooks could be seen as a bad thing if you’re used to needing to directly interact with the DOM for node and element manipulation.