>> React literally replaces HTML and the DOM with its own XML dialect and virtual DOM.

This is one thing I don't like about React. If my intention is to create an HTML template, I would like to use HTML to do that, not through another layer of indirection (JSX).

>> No other front-end framework has gone as far as React in trying to replace the vanilla web platform with its own technology and idioms.

I think Angular does something similar with zonejs while trying to patch every javascript async function. I just don't like this approach at all. Because of this, while using Angular, I have to keep in the back of my head that the setTimeout function that I'm calling is not the native setTimeout function. Most of the time I don't have to worry about it, but it still bothers me.