I agree with this sentiment. I find that most developers seem to be stuck in thinking of their components as imperative. They expect to alter the state (dom) directly instead of describing the dom as a function of state (props).

Because of that, they quickly reach for the escape hatch that useEffect provides everytime they need to change something.

I genuinely don't know how to help my fellow team members grasp the basic concept of components better. It doesn't seem, to me, like it's something everyone gets eventually. I've actually seen far too many developers who just don't seem to get there even after long months working with component libraries.

As a side note: I don't get all the love for class components. All I remember from using them were the endless bugs because we somehow missed something on willUpdateProps or whatever. Class components could have worked but they always felt like the different life cycle methods were all cobbled together with little overall consistency (see Vue for an example of life cycle hooks done better, even if I have plenty of other gripes with Vue's design)