Comment by lopatin

I keep reiterating this point, but people keep calling React complex, it's not. React is raw simplicity. As far as I'm aware it's the most minimal API for creating sufficiently complex UIs. It's so minimal that it's hard to build full apps in because it says "not my problem" to questions such as routing, global state management, you name it. And that's fair. I still maintain that it's a tool for pros. But the responsibility that it does take on, I believe it does so in the most simple way possible. And you don't need to be aware of React internals to use it effectively. The details of the component lifecycle are not internals, but part of the public API.