Things every React.js beginner should know

1. It's not HTML, it's JSX, a vaguely XML-ish DSL that is compiled to JS. You can (and some people do) write the underlying JS code directly. But, obviously, writing a DSL that compiles to 'React.CreateElement.Div()' is the same (at least as far as seperation of concerns) as writing 'React.CreateEleemnt.Div()' directly.

2) Best practices focused on separation of concerns, and in particular, on avoiding embedding logic into your static HTML. The canonical example to avoid historically was to put JS directly into a links href attribute, but some have suggested Angular is guilty of something equivalent with its ng-* attributes.

3) Conversely, React advocates agree 100% on separation of concerns, but feel the "nothing that looks like HTML can be in the same file as something that looks like JS" injunction is actually an example of separation of technologies.

So here we see the culmination of the great Frameworks vs. Libraries divide. Frameworks alleviate the need for the type of articles like the one linked here because they eliminate choice paralysis and imposter syndrome. Everyone is worried about whether or not they're doing things The Right Way™ and so they either blaze ahead and hit the same pitfalls everyone else does (and then write blog posts to warn others) or they hold off on adopting the tech until they are shown The Right Way™ by someone else.

The truth is, libraries and frameworks both end up being equally complex to work with, precisely because the problem of building large applications is inherently difficult.

It all comes down to personal preference:

Are you the type of person who is more likely to believe you can do something better than everyone else, or are you the type who is more likely to defer to those you believe to be better than you?

Are you decisive or do you agonize over the smallest choices?

Do you feel a compelling need to understand how everything works, or are you willing to implicitly trust other people's systems?

I find it amusing that people who gravitate toward smaller libraries like Backbone.js and React.js rail against frameworks like Ember or Angular for being overly complex, heavy, and "magical", and then proceed to cobble together a Rube-Goldberg-esque system of disparate dependencies to achieve the same goals. When React first started getting popular all you read about was how simple the API was and how it was Easy to Reason About™. Fast forward to today and you need to have working knowledge of WebPack, ES6, Redux, immutable.js, Babel, and a bevy of other dependencies to be aligned with the React ecosystem's ever-evolving best practices.

The exact same thing happened with Backbone.js and it will probably happen again with the next shiny new view-model library to ride the hype train.

It's important that I point out, however, that none of this is necessarily a bad thing. Smaller libraries like React.js and Backbone.js encourage a cavalcade of innovation from which awesome things like Redux are born. But let's not pretend that this doesn't result in a heckuva lot of churn for the average developer whose job is to simply get shit done.

How about TypeScript/TSX? React's components and "views" are easy to type (and you get completion in your IDE) but I still have to find a convenient way to type an Immutable map where each key/value pair has a different type (the equivalent of a TypeScript object). Any idea?

I agree with your argument. I have seen people say on HN that 1 hour of setup to start a project is too much. If this is the case, React + stuff is really not the right thing for you.

However, the React ecosystem is really not that complex. You can write clean, sizable apps with vanilla React.

Then you might need a state management system like Redux. Its quite easy to roll out your own that fits your project and does not have all the pluggability whistles like Redux.

All other things are really not needed for most people, and if you do, you are facing problems so large, evaluation of libraries is a small fraction of the effort.

It's more the mindset of people "I'm missing something great" that drives them crazy and into framework fatigue. (OMG server-side rendering, falcor, relay, immutable.js arrgggh)

Usually, you are missing something you don't need, otherwise you would be looking for it actively.