> That said, in React, if you were to mess up a 'token', the runtime would be very upset

The same is of course true for Vue. At runtime, it will spit an error if it doesn't know that token (variable, function, whatever it is).

My feeling is what you don't like are really the quotation marks because it looks weird. I had a similar feeling when I started with vue. However, it is really a matter of taste if you prefer the Vue @click="foo" or onClick={foo} syntax.