Describing that collection of tools as "minimalistic" was indeed a touch of irony.

Angular (1.x) might not be "cool" anymore, but it can be pretty darn "minimal" to set up: https://github.com/roboprog/ang-prog-enh

(above not quite done, it's for a presentation I'm going to do in December, but it's pretty close)

React works better for many things - server side rendering for SEO; endless scrawling wall of chunks of more-of-the-same (social media...) - but it's not "simple".