React very quickly turned into an over-complicated mess. The basic premise of "specify how the DOM should represent the data/look based on the state of the data

React very quickly turned into an over-complicated mess. The basic premise of "specify how the DOM should represent the data/look based on the state of the data, and when you update the data, the DOM will automatically update" is sound and was very useful. But all this stuff about hooks, and all the stuff with Redux that got very popular, was totally unnecessary. It's now a pain to perform the simple task of fetching data from an API and rendering it compared to the jQuery days. That being said, I think your post is over-dramatic. Simple React apps for learning purposes shouldn't be too difficult or crazy. You may be overindulging in grouchiness and not giving it a chance. Personally, I want to try something more minimalist like mithril.js at some point. I have heard good things about Svelte. It looks weird to me, but willing to give it a try.