I am an amateur but the reason I love React is because there is so much learning material. Robin Wieruch's The Road To Learn React book started with building a HN reader.

I think Claude/ChatGPT works exceptionally well with React code.

I tried to learn Svelte but React/Tailwind plus a language model is just incredible.

Much React hate I think is the way I view the band Metallica. They were way cooler in my head when they were not as popular.