The point is that you don't have to use it. If you can't be bothered to learn a simple new feature then just keep doing it the old way; your code will still work. I don't even understand the complaint; are they never supposed to change anything? It's totally optional; even if most of the community goes down that direction you don't have to.

Beyond that, hooks are super simple and the complainers are just making a big deal out of nothing. They are just callback functions that you implement outside of a class instead of overloading arbitrary method identifiers like "componentDidUpdate".

You also don't have to use it.