I love React, but the author does make some good points. React does have a lot of footguns, especially if you don't have a very solid grasp of how it works (or at least a solid mental model).
A big part of the problem happens well before React though. Lots of people don't even know how JavaScript works despite using it every day. So it's no wonder that people get tripped up trying to understand functional components, useEffect, etc.