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If that's all you need then React was never the right solution. What makes you realise this now?

If you're used to React/JSX you'll hate templates, though. Look for a HTML component rendering library instead.

He's hardly alone in this, half the SPAs I see could have been pure HTML/CSS.

I disagree with hating templates. I am used to both, I find templates are much easier to deal with depending on the templating language.