Does it? I'm all too familiar with bad codebases where yes, trivial changes take days. That's not the fault of the library. It's the fault of the people using

Does it? I'm all too familiar with bad codebases where yes, trivial changes take days. That's not the fault of the library. It's the fault of the people using the libraries. I'm not a big fan of web dev at large but there's nothing inherent to React's architecture that makes editing a single component to add a static link difficult (that I'm aware of). What you're describing is typical average dev that creates impossible spaghetti code and then with an honest heart tells project managers how hard it is to change the color of a button because of incomprehensible tech jargon until the clueless PM goes 'okay okay, will two days be enough?' and the dev goes 'yes, I think so'.