Framework bloat is a major turn-off for a lot of people. The reason it feels like bloat is because they have a lot of features that you'll likely never use. React handles this well because it has a clear distinction between the core library and anything else, including things that are essential for React development.

There are two observations I've made about React and the way it's positioned within its surrounding ecosystem:

• It's easier to deploy apps that depend on a simple library instead of a framework where all batteries are included
• It's easier to think about application development when you have tools that stay out of the way for the most part

In other words, you don't have to use the majority of React tools, but some of them are incredibly helpful.

Any given tool is external to the library you're working with; it's essential to remember this. Tools exist to automate something that would otherwise suck more development time out of our lives. Life is too short to manually do things that can be done for us. I repeat, life is too short for tasks that software can perform better than us. If you're a React developer, take comfort in the fact that there are tools out there for all of the important things that you need to do but don't have time to do.