eureka

You are absolutely right; web development is unnecessarily complex when you use frameworks such as React. But there are alternatives! Here's an example application built without heavy frameworks. It is very maintainable and easy to understand: https://github.com/wisercoder/eureka It uses two 500-line libs: This is the component "framework", it is 500 lines: https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder This is the router, it is 500 lines: https://github.com/wisercoder/mvc-router

> What makes the trade-off of all that extra complexity and abstraction worth it? For most applications the extra complexity is not worth it. React started off as a simple library but now it has bloated with Redux and ReactRouter and Hooks and all that nonsense. You can do plain HTML/CSS/JS development for most projects. Here's an example: https://github.com/wisercoder/eureka It uses a couple of 500-line libs, that's it. No complicated framework, and yet you will be more productive.

React works well for simple, non-interactive components. Complex, interactive components are going to have state. Stateful components don't work so well in React. If you want to update props in a stateful component, the recommendation is to replace the component entirely by changing its key. At the point all of the benefits of React (preservation of selection, caret position, scroll position etc.) vanish. You might as well use vanilla js instead of React. What does using Vanilla JS look like? Here's an example: https://github.com/wisercoder/eureka It uses two tiny 500-line libs. It uses TSX files, just like React. It has components, just like React. It doesn't have incremental screen update, but neither does React, if your components are interactive and stateful.

Here's an example of an application written without using heavy frameworks: https://github.com/wisercoder/eureka It uses two libs, 200 lines and 500 lines each: This lib for components: https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder And this one for routing (HTML5 history API): https://github.com/wisercoder/mvc-router React is overrated in my opinion. If your UI is mostly read-only then React works well. If it has simple interactivity then React still works well. But if you have components that manage their own interactivity then React breaks down. That's because such interactive components have state. When a component has state, and you want to update props then FB recommends replacing the component by changing the key. At that point you lose all benefits of React, including preservation of selection, scroll position, focus, etc.