[amenod]

While you don't _need_ React (or a similar powerful library / framework), it takes one's productivity to a whole different level.

I have a feeling that you have already made up your mind not to like it, but if you ever give it a fair try, you might find it useful for some projects. It is very complex under the hood, of course, so if you want to have total control you might need to dig into the internals. But to a casual user it gives a very nice abstraction, very powerful, easy to use (granted - and abuse) and performant. The thing that sold it for me is the declarative programming. You have state, state translates to rendering... and that's pretty much it. Compared to thinking about transitions in native JS (or jQuery or whatever) it is like night and day in any non-trivial project.

[xyzzy_plugh]

I've tried it. And yes, I want full control. The abstractions mostly work, but when they don't -- there you are again, thinking about transitions in native JS again. What was the point?

[amenod]

Well, newsflash: you are always dealing with abstractions, no matter which layer you pick. You might just as well pick one that lets you develop more complex things faster and more reliably. That said, if you are set on actively fighting it (not installing react dev tools, being frustrated by not having visibility under the hood) then it's probably best to stay away from React.

I have quite a lot of history with native JS, but was happy to relinquish control to webpack/babel/react... not at first (had the same reaction as you do), but once I gave it a fair chance I discovered that things just work. Never had any problem with React not performing the way it should.