I don't disagree, but I see so many usages of React that are mostly static websites and sit in front of an existing MVC framework server side. I think a little

I don't disagree, but I see so many usages of React that are mostly static websites and sit in front of an existing MVC framework server side. I think a little bit of native JS can accomplish a great deal of the requirements for most front end work, and when it gets too complicated for native you'll know. What I would advocate against is starting with React, because then your lowest possible tooling complexity is React and it's build pipeline.