Here's an example of an application written without using heavy frameworks: https://github.com/wisercoder/eureka https://github.com/wisercoder/eureka It uses

Here's an example of an application written without using heavy frameworks: https://github.com/wisercoder/eureka https://github.com/wisercoder/eureka It uses two libs, 200 lines and 500 lines each: This lib for components: https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder And this one for routing (HTML5 history API): https://github.com/wisercoder/mvc-router https://github.com/wisercoder/mvc-router React is overrated in my opinion. If your UI is mostly read-only then React works well. If it has simple interactivity then React still works well. But if you have components that manage their own interactivity then React breaks down. That's because such interactive components have state. When a component has state, and you want to update props then FB recommends replacing the component by changing the key. At that point you lose all benefits of React, including preservation of selection, scroll position, focus, etc.