Very well said. I've been using React since it came out, and have been pushing back on Hooks since they came out.

Class components are dead simple. A class, a setState method, this.props, this.state, and some lifecycle methods. SO easy for anyone to understand.

Function components with hooks are not. A whole new (and unnecessary) paradigm; some mysterious hooks engine that needed new ESLint rules to be created just so people can keep the weird, delicate balance in place; hooks having their own timing problems, requiring usage of useRef which the React team tries to get people to avoid; etc.

Frontend codebases used to have several layers, with React just being one of the thin ones. Now, nearly the entire frontend codebase is inside React world. I'm not a fan of this direction.