One major reason is that Ng is its own thing. It's not JavaScript, nor HTML. Also, "batteries included" means buying into the whole monolithic framework. The React ecosystem requires more decisions, but also benefits from ability to pick and choose the right libraries for a given project. That said, Angular has some great parts, eg TypeScript and RxJS.

I think people will grow "hating" React because of the ease of use. Just like JS and PHP.

I weep for the people that will maintain all the React mess that is being created. React is great, but the current ecosystem has too much liberty for too many junior dev using it.

Angular being a framework has a lot to offer in term of maintainability and good practices.

A couple good points. I agree w/ your 2nd and 3rd sentences. That said, I'm personally glad I invested in React and its ecosystem.

I can assure you that nobody on earth hates Js and PHP for "ease of use"

I find the "build your own framework" aspect of React to be as much a curse as it is a blessing. You can skip some of the bloat, but you also have to kludge together multiple libraries of varying quality to get the same things you'd get out of the box with a "batteries included" framework.

especially for new developers and organizations. You have a choice between a wide-open landscape and a script that you're deathly afraid to eject because you can never go back. Neither is great for someone considering adoption for a new commercial product.

Yeah, I hear you about the "eject" problem for create-react-app. In CRA1, react-app-rewired emerged as a reasonable approach to no-eject config extension, but CRA2's switch to Webpack 4 (itself having moved towards zero-config) broke almost all the rewired plugins. There are solutions in the works (eg babel-plugin-macros), and alt approaches like Neutrino, but timing is tough right now as there isn't a clearly-established and well-lit path for good defaults plus low-maintenance config.

> One major reason is that Ng is its own thing

You're spot on with that in my case. I already knew JS and wanted to build on top of it. React just felt natural to pick up than Ng. Also, the fact that ng completely changed in v2 really put me off and I haven't looked at it since.

I think they could have avoided 90% of their problems by just giving it a different name.

Agree, I can't believe that the company owning the major Internet search engine gave the same name to two different frameworks.