HTML is hard to compose (as in composing a page out of modular components), reuse (your toolbar everywhere has to recreate a bunch of components, like the nav section, logged in state, etc.).
Sure you can do that with server-side templates, but it's more readable (especially in a team) to use React components.
For me the main benefits of React didn't really shine until I had to maintain complex state and component trees among multiple devs. What is overkill for a simple blog is an absolute godsend for more complex apps.
Although frankly I still think Angular had a much better architecture, and I'm kinda sad React took over. But hey the frontend landscape gets a revolution every year or two (sigh) so who knows what the dominant paradigm will be by 2024.
Sure you can do that with server-side templates, but it's more readable (especially in a team) to use React components.
For me the main benefits of React didn't really shine until I had to maintain complex state and component trees among multiple devs. What is overkill for a simple blog is an absolute godsend for more complex apps.
Although frankly I still think Angular had a much better architecture, and I'm kinda sad React took over. But hey the frontend landscape gets a revolution every year or two (sigh) so who knows what the dominant paradigm will be by 2024.