I‘ve started building a new web app (not website) using Go and jQuery, all loaded from a CDN without any build step. Writing JavaScript the imperative way (rather than declarative like react) feels very refreshing.
I would feel cool doing this until any sizeable DOM manipulation and then immediately remember why react was such a godsend.
The underappreciated part of React today is it helps you to be more secure by default. Once you are handling user generated content, even of the simplest kind, it's far safer.
I would love to do this. However, if you are building a heavily interactive application, wouldn't it be easier to manage with a framework instead of jquery ? Wouldn't you want to manipulate DOM more easily than with jquery ? Unless the web app is not that complex. Thoughts ?