Except it's not half baked. Because guess what - now you need a new template language that supports constructs like conditionals, loops, etc... You basically end up implementing a half-baked version of javascript with an unfamiliar syntax. Even worse they need to interact with state. Many template engines introduce some sort of "data binding" abomination which is a complex way of saying how you want the state to interact with the view.
React is simple. Here is your data, and here is a function that transforms that data into a view.
Templates are terrible, and that is a hill I am willing to die on.
> React is simple. Here is your data, and here is a function that transforms that data into a view.
Is that aspect so much different from templating engines? In templating engines the rendering step is simply abstracted one step further: You get a generalized render function, that you pass data to and a template to render with that data. That is also a function to turn your data into a view. I don't see how React is better in that aspect.
React is simple. Here is your data, and here is a function that transforms that data into a view.
Templates are terrible, and that is a hill I am willing to die on.