React Armory – The simplest way to learn React

Create-react-app is the way to go for beginners. It gets you up and running with the full toolchain with 0 setup or configuration - you can get right into learning React itself. All you need is node, npm, and an editor, and you are pretty much ready to go.

VanillaJS, jQuery, and Ember will be very far from VB in terms of simplicity. There really is nothing quite like VB for web development right now. It's strange/interesting that such a thing hasn't been created yet (or hasn't gained any traction).

I think React comes close in the sense that the code you write to create the components can map very closely to divs on an HTML page. There's no visual drag/drop editor or anything, but with Create React App, you can make changes to the code and see the browser refresh every time you save.

Have a look at the official React tutorial too: https://facebook.github.io/react/tutorial/tutorial.html

EDIT: now that I've bothered to Google it, here's at least one project that looks like a VB-style builder using React: https://github.com/ipselon/structor