But, like you say, for a lot of apps you can start with a much simpler stack. I did the same thing when I was getting started. My "stores" were just simple JS objects with some subscribe methods. This worked well enough that I was able to focus on building my app and to see first hand how great the React model is for building UIs.

Either get a boilerplate, generator or spend frustrating afternoons configuring to the start line. Then once you start work spend hours reading docs to figure out what all that stuff you installed actually does.

OR

Build from scratch, build the simple stuff, then when your brain says 'hey someone must of done this', look for a library and plug it in. Then at least you understand a general idea of what you're installing.

An over simplification, of course, but building rudimentary routers, event managers, mvc structures etc helped me immensely.

The problem is when people ask themselves "What do I need?" and then go "I don't know ... hmmm ... I better get everything then ..."

A lot of dev, like me in the college, have the tendency to get everything right before starting writing first line of code when learning something new, in hope that orthodox practice will help avoiding pitfalls on the way.

But what I really learned along those years, is that pitfalls are inevitable, and expose yourself to them at the early phase of learning is helpful so that you could later appreciate other people's solution and the reasoning behind. Trying to get everything right from beginning hinder you from getting such first-hand and organic insight, and wondering with tools too much will stray yourself from focusing on the essentials.