I don't understand the OP's argument either. I'm primarily a back-end dev with a bit of HTML+JS xp, and I had zero issues with JSX when I decided to use React

I don't understand the OP's argument either. I'm primarily a back-end dev with a bit of HTML+JS xp, and I had zero issues with JSX when I decided to use React for a small project. I didn't find JSX confusing at all, it took me about 10 mins to understand the syntax fully and the error handling was very explicit. I'm not experienced at JS frameworks (have used Knockout and that's about it) and I'm certainly not from a front-end or designer background, much the opposite actually. What really bothered me at the time was that my code was messy and I was struggling to properly wire up the React components with my data model - thankfully I since discovered Flux and then Redux :)