From my perspective as a developer who's had to use React, it seems more like following trends than solving a real problem. In my case, I've had to deal with a

From my perspective as a developer who's had to use React, it seems more like following trends than solving a real problem. In my case, I've had to deal with a form-heavy application, where React adds more boilerplate to form handling than just using the DOM. I've really never bought the performance thing about a javascript-heavy SPA. I'd much rather see progressively-loaded html content than watch a loading indicator. I'd really rather have slightly longer page loads on average than deal with the long wait, and then hurry up and wait of the typical Single-Page App.