I don’t know if you actually read the article or not but just to be clear that was not the argument that was made.

It’s not just “not new” it’s considered to be actively worse than all of its peers in terms of things like performance and complexity, it’s actively a very questionable choice in a greenfield project in 2023.

I did, and the fixation on React’s age struck me. Was it the core premise? No. Was it a central theme? Yes.

I agree with you, there was definitely a fixation. The implication is that React doesn't do things the new and better way just because it's old, rather than a deliberate decision.

Goes back to writing SQL

No, the core theme was technical debt. Technical debt happens to be (typically) a function of time.