I had similar thoughts when I first learned React. After building several UIs with it, I think the core thing that trips devs up is that it's very easy to make

I had similar thoughts when I first learned React. After building several UIs with it, I think the core thing that trips devs up is that it's very easy to make things far more complicated than they need to be. Beginner resources often don't help, either. Many of the boilerplate and starter pack examples you can find online have a ridiculous level of complexity in the file folder structure, component structure, dependencies, etc. - for example, no, you don't need half a dozen components spread across as many files to render a simple header or footer. If you try to stick to a minimalist approach, it can be a pretty convenient framework. Definitely beats trying to do the same thing the jQuery way.