(My understanding is that Vue templates also need to be compiled -- is that incorrect?)
I wrote the tutorial. Could you give any suggestions on how I could make it easier to get into?
The number one thing that you (and Facebook) could do to help people learn React, and combat the perception that it requires overly complex tooling, is write a tutorial that shows how to use React entirely in-browser without any build toolchain. A static HTML file, some <script> tags pointing at a CDN — done. No distractions, nothing to download, nothing to install, nothing to run, just a JavaScript library that makes it easier to write view templates.
It would make it even easier to get into if that tutorial were written entirely in ES5, but you could use babel-standalone if you felt that JSX and ES6 were important enough.
Maybe my use case is rarer, I don't know, but if I want to do things right, I want to understand what I'm setting up. Do I really need babel? If I use Typescript, do I still need it? etc...
I understand this doesn't have much to do with React per se but if these components are a definitive part of the ecosystem people work with, there is value in at least telling people where to find a high quality explanation for how they fit together.
And to me using JSX is infinitely better than have to use opaque template directives like Angular and Vue.
I've since learned more about compiling and including other resources so could probably handle the React tooling and requirements now but back when I started it was a big stumbling block.
I took a closer look at your tutorial. It's really very good! And I like that you link to a codepen which gets people up and running without having to even create their own html file.
Tutorials speak differently to different audiences -- I imagine people used to building more traditional "apps" get a lot out of this one.
But speaking from the perspective of someone who spent years making html+css pages that had data piped into them from the back-end (PHP, Rails, etc)... the scope of the tutorial is somewhat overwhelming to me :) It goes right into components, shared state, immutability, functional programming, history... to some people that is a lot of concepts at once. I think the appeal of Vue (to a certain slice of people) is that you can just add it as a "light touch" onto an existing html page. For example, show me one textbox who's value gets displayed in a div somewhere else on the page as I type, or one button that toggles the visibility of one image. Just super duper basic stuff, in very isolated and limited-scope chunks, and in the context of "easy dom manipulation" (as opposed to "building a game or app").