"Rest of the stack" also includes things like build tools, Javascript testing framework, TypeScript, etc.

Fair point.

I'm not a front end expert...but the variety of choices around filling the stack for react seems broader than it was in the past.

It feels like there's more risk in making the wrong choice. I see lots of regrets around redux, for example, adding more complexity than initially wanted. Or, selecting a tool that becomes abandonware, etc.

Yes, there are a bunch of regrets about Redux, but I have the feeling it got better last year.

In 2015 we had countless Flux implementations and most of them have been abandoned. I did an app with Flummox, for example and switched to Redux later.

But now? Redux and MobX are basically the major players and you can still do small to medium sized apps without them.

Anyone who went thru the Angular debacle would certainly see it from a contrary point of view. Yes there is more risk of a particular piece of the stack being wrong and needing to be replaced but the risk is not a total rewrite of your app out of something like Angular 1. Rather it is a smaller effort such as moving your flux implementation or going from gulp to webpack. I think the modularity actually helps in long term support of an application, but you pay for it in up frot complexity and contextual understanding of all the pieces and how they bolt together.