> my vanilla app loaded in 4 seconds and started rendering after ~2 seconds, while the React/Redux app took 50 seconds to first render
I'm all hands up for vanilla JS development, but I really don't think this drastic load/render time difference is caused by React but rather by the poor coding.
React is tiny, and you can see performance degradation like that only if you don't use it right, don't understand the life-cycle or over-engineer
Yes, that is probably very true. Another project of mine is a crossword puzzle game for kids (puzzlepirate.net), written in React by a friend who as opposed to myself knows what he's doing. The client there is not a lot heavier than pushdata, despite it having a lot more UI stuff in it.
If it's consistently poor coding on behalf of react apps, perhaps the documentation or culture around react isn't explaining the pitfalls or encouraging good design.
I'm all hands up for vanilla JS development, but I really don't think this drastic load/render time difference is caused by React but rather by the poor coding.
React is tiny, and you can see performance degradation like that only if you don't use it right, don't understand the life-cycle or over-engineer