[penumbral]

React hooks were a huge mistake because they (along with the huge push by Gaaeron to ditch redux at the same time) disrupted the more declarative styles in React that subjectively relax the mind. Boilerplate code is tedious, but gives the brain a rest from reasoning that many developers actually enjoy. You can really get in the zone wiring up a react/redux app and isolate yourself from re-render logic by focusing on individual stores, reducers, and action logic.

The hooks people came in and said F all that, lets instead create an API that garbles up all the code in one spot, with imperatively nested functions required for more complex use-cases, oh and lets use CONTEXT for state management and just partition items up to deal with re-renders.

They didn't do it on purpose, the react team is highly skilled, but they lacked the wisdom to understand how lower tier or mid-tier developers would use it. I knew plenty of devs that had 3-4 YOE and couldn't grok hooks for years.