In React's defense, it's far from "impenetrable." In fact, its API exposes less than a dozen attachment points (considering render + lifecycle methods or their hook equivalents). It's a small and stable interface on top of a simple tree structure and an intuitive reconciliation algorithm. Most of the time you don't even need to reason about its logic, but when you do, it's understandable and debuggable.

I'm also skeptical that we should consider framework-specific dev tools as evidence of an impenetrable abstraction. As long as the tools strictly enhance the debugging experience, they are a feature, not a smell. They are evidence of a problem when they only exist because it's impossible to debug the API without them.

For example, Apollo Dev Tools "strictly enhances" the debugging experience. It provides a nice UI for GraphQL specific debugging sessions, but it doesn't break the "network" tab of Dev Tools. If you want to use apollo-client without its dev tools, you're no worse off than you were before adopting apollo-client. But you do gain something if you choose to use them.