I always thought the GWT->react branch of the webdev family tree was an inbred, unecessarily cumbersome compromise bred from JavaScript and performance metrics rather than descending from the beautiful code family we used to have with Rails and Django.

The only reason react seems to look beautiful is because it's compared to custom JavaScript state management rather than the server-state paradigm that probably makes most sense for over 90% of apps.

The only real place it makes sense is when you're Google or Facebook and those 15 milliseconds actually translate to quantifiable lost user attention.

If your app is actually useful and not just an attention farm, those 15ms are almost never worth your engineering team's sanity.