There are many JS libraries that are wonderfully simple. I think the problem is:
- Too much choice; it's insane how much you have to decide before you get started: React or Vue? SSR or SPA? REST, GraphQL, or RPC? PostCSS or Sass? CSS-in-JS? What router? Redux or stateful components? Axios or Fetch API? Client-side rendering/routing or server-side rendering/routing? Webpack, Parcel, Create-react-app, Next.js, or Gastby? And the list goes on... I mean that's just nuts.
- State management is inherently complicated; people don't realize that 90% of the case you don't need interactive / stateful views to build a product. People implement bunch of useless interactive "niceness" that are overkill because React allows them to. If you use React as an HTML template engine then React is actually super simple and super neat.
How awesome would it be to have a framework that has sensible defaults for all these questions. And that educates how to decide certain crucial aspects.
For example:
- Use plain old HTML instead of interactive views if you can.
- Don't start with Redux. Instead, use Redux only after you know exactly why you need Redux.
- Use a RPC-like API (e.g. https://github.com/reframejs/wildcard-api) and only use REST/GraphQL if you need to expose your data to third parties.
- Use server-side rendering/routing if your app is mainly about content (a blog, a newspaper, a e-commerce shop, ...).
- Use client-side rendering/routing if your app is mainly about user interactions (a music player, an email app, a graphical editor, ...).
That's what I'm trying with Reframe: https://github.com/reframejs/reframe
