I won't make an argument for Angular or Flux/Redux because those are very opiniated frameworks that might be overkill or simply not at all how you want to go about your app's architecture.

But React is about the view. You can't possibly be convinced that manually traversing the dom is just as easy and expressive as using JSX. Even in the simplest of interactive (as in you need Javascript) components or pages.

React's concept and syntax is super easy to understand and perfect for modularizing the components of your app. The real problem IMHO is the tool chain. That's what drives developers unfamiliar with the ecosystem away. And of course the fact that it seems to change all the time. The first time I looked at React they rolled their own transpiler. Now Babel is the recommended way to go.

According to the tutorial page you should either use browserify or webpack. You don't have to - but without them stuff gets messy pretty quick. Of course if you pick one of these up you also have to learn how to use them and you will want plugin A, B and C to get to your simple Hello, World React App in the first place.

So yeah. That's why it's so easy to step away from that thinking why don't I just simply roll my own framework.