[undo76]

Well, technically you don't need to know JSX, but it pays off to know it IMHO. Moreover, the DOM API is much more complicated than React API and the latest doesn't depend on the particular browser you are using.

But yes, to use a technology, you need to understand it.

Regarding the size, you are right, I wouldn't recommend to use React for such a tiny task.

[warfangle]

IMHO, the JSX as used in this example is pretty obvious if you know ES6 syntax. The only "weird" part is curly braces for data interpolation, but even that is pretty semantically obvious.

[brlewis]

Regarding size, a Mithril/MSX implementation would look about the same.