[ademup]

I strongly disagree. Parent poster specifically states 'as a long time jquery dev...', so their objectives almost certainly do not aline with those of a student. Indeed, "picking a technology based on whether it challenges you or not..." Has almost no value at all for a prudent, real-world dev making real world software.

[hobofan]

I think it has a value if you value long term employability > short term employability.

If you mainly choose technology based on the fact it doesn't take any effort to learn at all, you will soon hit a wall on what software you can use overall.

[nightski]

The problem is experience in jQuery and even Angular 1 are not relevant to the issue of why React (or even Vue for some) may be perceived as difficult. They use a very different model.

Emacs was very difficult for me when I first started learning it. It was much more difficult than using a simple text editor (and this was with 10 years of programming experience)! Yet I persevered and you know what? After giving it some time and learning it properly I found myself vastly more productive with the tool.

Some things don't lend themselves well to immediate gratification. If the OP provided even a hint as to why React was more difficult for him I'm guessing it's not something with React but rather that he was using two completely different state management solutions.

[thebigkick]

Curious, how long did it take before you before emacs was your go-to choice?

I'm a big vi and sublime text user but always open for better tooling.

btw - I actually agree with you on the learning thing but React just sucks. I'm able to get shit done with Vue and at the end of the week I haven't wasted three afternoons learning jsx/webpack/deployment/relearning-a-new-way-of-doing-css blah blah. I say this with some hesitation but CSS is a solved problem in my opinion with Sass.