As Vinnl suggested, I interpreted dvt’s comment as disliking the declarative style rather than imperative. If the comment was instead intended just to object to the JSX/SVG syntax, then the objection seems rather superficial. It’s just an entity type and some named parameters, plus a bit of punctuation that will be immediately familiar to anyone working in front-end web development. If the alternative in dvt’s comment was meant to be a declarative specification of a circle and not an imperative call to draw one, then the biggest difference between

    <circle cx="150" cy="77" r="40" />

and

    draw.circle(150, 77, 40)

is that the former uses named parameters and the latter does not, and I suspect a lot of us would consider the former to be the more explicit, less error-prone choice in that case.

Yeah, I think I misinterpreted the intent of your answer, because of a different read of dvt's comment you replied to.

They weren't arguing JSX vs no JSX, they were describing arguments for using React ('s declarative interface) over D3's imperative approach, which GP expressed surprise about.

Top comment was clearly complaining about the syntax as an argument against a declarative approach.

Looks like I and the person you're replying to interpreted "despise (..) React's clunky long-form declarative style" differently from the way you did, then.