> In someways we've digressed significantly and made it ridiculously more complicated to build a modern web app in contrast to what jQuery gives you out-of-the-

> In someways we've digressed significantly and made it ridiculously more complicated to build a modern web app in contrast to what jQuery gives you out-of-the-box with a simple script include. That's true, but I find that things are complicated because either 1) the complexity is higher because we're dealing with a proper app, in which case jQuery wouldn't be much simpler (you'd probably use Backbone.js at the very least, and that gets messy quick), or 2) people use a lot of 'state of the art' stuff that they don't really need. In regards to 2: if what you need to do can be done with a script tag and jQuery, you probably wouldn't need anything beyond 'plain' React and it would still be a benefit. And if you go for something like Preact, the download size is smaller than jQuery, so you could even consider using both at the same time; preact for dom updates, and jQuery for everything else. More and more I find myself opting for (p)react even for simple things like a slideshow widget or a tabbed element. I find it nicer than jQuery and if you avoid using all the 'cool stuff' (redux, etc.) it's simpler too.