React gets a bad rap because of all the rubbish built around it, but if you do ever want to try the declarative model over vanilla/jQuery, React is actually exactly what you want if you want to avoid compile time magic. The only thing happening at compile time with React is a line-for-line swap from JSX tags:
<foo bar="baz">{boop}</foo>
to a createElement function call:
React.createElement("foo", { bar: "baz" }, ...boop);
Other than that it's entirely Javascript. No templates, computed/derived values or any of that other bullshit. You could probably implement the compile step in like 5 lines of code.
I've built big projects in Vue and find it almost impossible to find a reason to use it. Svelte looks cut from the same cloth. They just fundamentally have the wrong approach.
I've built big projects in Vue and find it almost impossible to find a reason to use it. Svelte looks cut from the same cloth. They just fundamentally have the wrong approach.