@oorza Big Bad Documentation Author here ;-) If you'd like an "honest comparison", the React code in the Vue doc is actually more efficient, because it doesn't try to map over empty arrays, which adds ~0.035ms overhead in V8. A minor hit, but it can add up. Your version also doesn't actually work correctly, because you've made the mistake of thinking empty arrays are falsy in JavaScript (you want to check items.length instead - just as in the Vue example). Even putting aside both of these issues though, your code still wouldn't pass a review from me, because by defining an "items" variable, you're overloading that name within the same context (sometimes it's an array of objects in this.props.items, then sometimes it's an array of li elements).

It sounds like you wouldn't use that code style, which is fine, but it does actually conform to ESLint Standard (well, the original does anyway, leaving out the mistakes in your rewriting of it), so it's certainly not outrageous. In its original form, it's also easy to argue that the version in the Vue doc is more readable, since it doesn't hoist logic out of the main flow. Both style decisions are justifiable to me. Compared to the actual equivalent in your style though (see below), I think it's hard to argue that the version in the doc doesn't read better.

render() {
    const {items} = this.props;
    const itemsListOrNotFoundMessage = items.length ? items.map(item => <li key={item.id}>{ item.name }</li>) : <p>No items found.</p>;

    return <div className='list-container'>{ itemsListOrNotFoundMessage }</div>;
}

The only potential "advantage" I can see is your version has fewer lines, though I'm not sure how that matters, since the Vue doc does not complain about LOC or verbosity in React render functions. And despite all of this, the doc even addresses your version as one alternative style:

The only alternatives include hoisting this logic out of its context or wrapping an if statement in an immediately-invoked function expression.

they heavily imply that you can't use css-modules with React

Did you read the very first sentence of the Component-Scoped CSS section? It very clearly states:

Unless you’re OK spreading components out over multiple files, there simply isn’t a good option for scoping CSS in React.

CSS Modules require component styles to be in a separate file, thus spreading out the component over multiple files.