[neals]

I think for creating a messy Proof of concept, or creating a simple tool with minimum UI and complexity, I will always be grabbing JQuery. It's just so simple and I've got all of it memorized for so long...

Which makes me curious, actually, how basic can you get with Vue and React? I only know the large "boilerplate" versions with Redux and bells and whistles. Anybody prototyping on React/Vue/Angular?

[gridlockd]

React itself can easily be used as a drop-in much like jQuery, but then you will be using plain Javascript syntax, which is a bit less readable than JSX.

If you're planning to use JSX, you'll need a JSX transpiler and before you know it you're down the Webpack/Babel rabbithole and you get a node_modules folder containing a zillion packages written by a thousand people, of which - statistically speaking - at least a handful will be clinically insane.

But yeah, in principle you can do it (and I have done it).