1. Don't use a boilerplate. Not even create-react-app. Learn webpack and npm and TS / Babel. It's not that hard.
2. If you havn't yet, take a second look at MobX. I got it once I realized that I can organize my state just as I love it with Redux (normalized and update strictly through actions). With MobX you don't need Reselect.
3. Even though the React community seems to favor ES6, at least give Typescript a serious try.
I can't say that I agree with this
Hunkering down to learn build tools will probably yield the lowest ROI compared to nearly anything else you could be doing
They're nice to know, sure, but you'll pick them up along the way as you use and modify them
As you said, not that hard :)
And +1 on MobX. Bee's knees
Getting type information in your editor when you are several levels deep in components is very useful.
My only complaint is trying to figure out how to properly work with 3rd party react modules within typescript's own namespace system
Could you be more specific about the issue you're having here? Might be able to help
What's the story with dipping your toe into TypeScript on existing projects? I'm using Webpack and babel-loader, so I'm not interested in using the TypeScript compiler itself, having to renaming files to .ts, or using a different extension for files which contain JSX, but I'd still like to try TypeScript on a few modules. Is that possible?
Flow seems much easier to dip into, but I haven't tried either in anger yet.
Could you give some arguments? I'm a big ES6 fan and I can't think of a good reason to use Typescript over it.
I should write a blog post about Redux and Typescript - it would be good to know which bits you are struggling with.
HMR works fine with Typescript, you do need to use Babel as well though. This post I wrote should get you up and running: http://blog.tomduncalf.com/posts/setting-up-typescript-and-r..., it is a little outdated (1.9 vs 2.1) but I don't think any major changes should be needed to make it work with newer versions. Unfortunately, HMR (v3 beta) doesn't play nice with react-router as far as I can tell, so I have given up on it for now. I really miss it so I hope someone knowledgable finds time to focus on getting it working better soon!
Another general pain point (apart from the fact that a lot of the guides you find seem reasonably outdated) is the general build setup. Your guide seems really good, but generally setting up react redux and typescript is a bit of a jungle.
If you do end up writing a post, please let me know!