No, I'm saying that implementing something is usually harder than using something. The tutorial is about how to implement a select; not about how to use a select.
> Using a <select> is still much easier than using React's implementation of it.
Yes, of course it is. But reading a tutorial about how you could implement something so understandable as <select> using React is a pretty good guide to understanding React! At least, to me it seems pretty great.