[kerkeslager]

I've used React for a while now, and I agree with you that most of these libraries are pretty garbage. I've solved this problem by just not using any of them.

These days I use two libraries: Preact and Immer. And I only introduce Immer to a project if state management becomes a pain point in the project, so I often don't even use Immer. I import these in my project with:

    <!-- in my base HTML template -->
    <script src='path/to/immer.js'></script>

    // in my JS
    import { h, Component, render } from './path/to/preact.js';
    import produce from immer;

This is sort of janky because Immer doesn't provide a real JS module, but basically all this does is pull in a total of four variables: h, Component, render, and produce.