I was in your shoes, saying why the hell I should use a web framework for a website? Then I realised two things:
Dynamic content, such as internationalisation, are easier to implement and optimize with frameworks.
There are built-in optimizations to benefit from, instead of implementing them yourself from scratch. For example, Gatsby, works on top of React, has very handy prefetching, lazy loading, and image optimisations. Sure, you can do these with plain JS too, but do you want to implement all these instead of just using someone elses work?
Apart from that, I agree with you that a software engineer should be mindful about tool selections and should avoid going overkill. Perfection lies in simplicity.
I was in your shoes, saying why the hell I should use a web framework for a website? Then I realised two things:
Dynamic content, such as internationalisation, are easier to implement and optimize with frameworks.
There are built-in optimizations to benefit from, instead of implementing them yourself from scratch. For example, Gatsby, works on top of React, has very handy prefetching, lazy loading, and image optimisations. Sure, you can do these with plain JS too, but do you want to implement all these instead of just using someone elses work?
Apart from that, I agree with you that a software engineer should be mindful about tool selections and should avoid going overkill. Perfection lies in simplicity.
I definitely agree with you.
React makes life easier if you value time and speed.