> I saw some visual builders for React , downloaded/tried a couple but they had pretty big learning curves of their own so I didn't bother taking it any further.

This was our experience with existing low code or code generating design tools as well – you actually have to put a lot of time into learning how to use them, time you could spend on learning actual React.

One of our guiding principles was that people who use Utopia should not need to learn anything that is proprietary to our platform.