I totally agree. Full page rendered app are way easier to code. It's like an immutable function - request in, transform, html out. I think as soon as you want to add some niceties with React you end up setting up a load of front end stuff. You suddenly need APIs, create-react-app, webpack, babel, build scripts, redux, routing etc. And you also end up losing out on some of the Django side, forms+validation, templating, views, urls. And often you end up having business spilling over to your front end.

I'm working on a project that lets you build your Django app like you normally would with templates and views but you get a React app and all the benefits of a single page app. You don't need to write any APIs or use redux etc. It will have a bunch of components built in and if you don't need any more then you don't even need to build the javascript yourself, you just include the already built file. At the moment I have a sort of Django Admin equivalent example working and I'm looking for some feedback. If you or anyone else has any ideas about it I would love to hear, feel free to PM me (email in profile).