Time to develop a low-JS vanilla SPA framework called "Jet Fuel"

Hey actually React has nothing to do with Megacorp at all. We adopted React in 2015 on a small team (less than 10 engineers) as did many other small startups at that time. The decision to use React on a small team is the same as it would be on a large team: It dramatically changes frontend development. It makes this career worth while. I did 5 years before React, and now still using React 7 years after with no competitor in sight.

I don't use React because I'm being forced to. We chose React!

Depends on the problem that small team is solving. I've used SPAs on several "small" teams (Angular*, Backbone.js) and they are very effective for solving the kind of problems that are otherwise solved by native applications (winforms and the like). When you have hundreds or thousands of forms / screens in a system then SPAs provide a large reduction in complexity.

For websites: we all like to dump on PHP but it was literally designed to build websites with relatively limited features / large reach - which covers a large swathe of the web.

So SPA: good for ERPs, CRMs etc but bad for webshops, social networks, TODO apps, news sites, Streaming sites, blogs etc.

[Why Angular? React is technically interesting, especially that it's build around the Rx pattern popularized in dotnet, however I have a deep-seated hate for Facebook for their key part in making Brexit happen which trumps any technical merit. Vue wasn't a thing back then]