I'm a fairly seasoned react developer and I've been thinking about this debate that have been going on lately. Meanwhile I'm writing a fairly involved front end app in vanilla JavaScript and a bit of jQuery. It's a blast from the past for me.

I went into this period of debate with what I feel is an open mind. Open to the possibility that react really is overrated and more trouble than it's worth.

But after writing this app I'm very well reminded of why I was so enthusiastic about react way back when. Handling state updates in vanilla JavaScript is quite messy.

Then again, react is far from a perfect solution to the problem. It adds about as much complications as it takes away.

I hope we can find better solutions. But I'm not sure how to move forward when it seems so hard to agree on what the problem is.