Data binding needs to be added to the JS standard. I am all for "separation of concerns" but I think we need to admit that HTML/CSS/JS has become a de facto tightly coupled standard of modern applications. I don't like it. I would much rather use JavaFX or somethjng else, but Web apps are here to stay. And like it or not, having to import external libraries to do something as simple as data binding is unacceptable.

JavaFX bindings are a joy to work with and everything "just works". You have FXML for Mark up, you have controllers for logic, and you have the freedom to create your own beans or database classes or use Spring or whatever you want to do. JavaFX is arguably an external library, but since it is packaged with Java I would say it is closer to being part of the standard library (certainly more so than React is part of JS).

There needs to be a dead simple way to tie the properties of a Web component to a JSON object. That's all it would need for now. I could develop some great small-medium Web apps without a single line of external JS with that alone. No more event triggers followed by queries followed by DOM manipulation. I just want to update a JSON object, and have that immediately reflected on the UI, for both built in and custom components.