React is both bigger (in terms of bytes) and more complex than Angular.
So, to answer your question, React is more complex than just about everything. I’d like to see you find a more complex framework.
We can run other executables on our local. The web itself is the problem and what needs to die to give way to something new.
I genuinely don't understand how Angular is considered simpler than React.
Both have a build step. React hasn't needed a "generator" for years now (if you mean stuff like CRA). With tools like Vite or RSBuild, it's like 2 lines. Yeah, the JSX needs to be compiled, but so do templates, custom CSS dialect, and TS's old/non-standard decorators in Angular.
Angular has way more quirks and reactivity foot guns than React. I think major React adoption painpoint is hooks, but while they are clunky, they're way "easier to hold" than most Angular tools.
Same when it comes to state management libraries in angular, but I digress.
Huge as in the library ecosystem? - yes it is huge.
Huge as in its a massive dependency? - yes it is huge.
I couldn't understand why React was so popular till I read a comment where someone explained that Tailwind and React in a large company allows the 1000s of devs to work in tiny little components without conflicting with others, and all of a sudden it makes sense why people make themselves suffer using React. Then everyone else is just following the large companies because "well X/Y/Z use it so we should too!!!"
Htmx is 59.9kb minified.
So it’s not huge in at least one dimension: file size.
https://bundlephobia.com/package/react@19.1.1
So, while yes the very latest version of react is *finally* as slim as competitors like preact, don't act like all the legacy projects where a migration is off the table due to time or money just don't exist.
function App() { return <div>Hello world</div> }
Publish it as if it would be deployed to prod. ~185kb
Compare the current React API to original React API. There are 18 hooks, Suspense, hydration, transitions, contexts, "user client"/"user server" etc.
