[novocantico]

> is probably the main benefit of a VDOM

I get the "no more imperative updates" dream. I've used these frameworks for probably a decade. I've mastered them.

Me personally, I prefer imperatively updating my DOM. I get completely fine-grained control over what's happening. I can architect it to be an extremely efficient machine. I can make it extremely easy to add/change/remove/fix features in my apps without forcing myself to think according to anyone else's opinionated methodology.

[nine_k]

If you have little state, or simple uniform state, you can actually store it in the real DOM efficiently, as values of controls, or lists of similar DOM nodes under a common known parent. If most of your DOM is static, and you only need small bits of interactivity, React is an excessively heavy tool.

The farther you get into complex GUI territory, the more you want a declarative, functional approach, because it makes things simpler. The closer you are to a handful of controls with simple logic, the more you want to just imperatively tell them what to do, and leave the rest of the page alone, because it makes things simpler. We now just have better tools than jQuery for that.

[newzisforsukas]

there is no reason something imperative cannot be declarative. the war is one of style, not capability, so saying you gain "fine-grained control" is kind of meaningless, imo