There is this debate of virtual DOM vs no virtual DOM, and from time to time you see people on HN claim how great vanilla JS is. Won't get into the former debate, but for the latter, people who make such comments probably aren't aware how different it is to create a UI as complex as Outlook/reddit/Spotify vs their personal website or a simple demo. For complex sites with lots of widgets and data, being able to write JSX and also efficiently update the DOM makes a huge difference. It is almost impossible to build and maintain a complex site with vanilla JS.
This might come as a shock to you, but nobody is downloading an .exe and running it on their computer any more, which does not work on Mac/Linux/Android/iOS etc anyway. In fact, if you do that, people likely think it's virus unless you are Microsoft or something.
