DOM sucks though, it's slow, it's heavyweight, it lacks transactions. We're stuck with it, and frameworks like React have to do the DOM diffing + patching thing, explicitly, in JS.
2. We're currently living in 2025. React (and SPAs) is not even slightly necessary.
Alex Russell has written swathes of arguments about Reacts performance issues https://infrequently.org/2024/11/if-not-react-then-what/
The DOM has become much faster since React started over a decade ago, the VDOM really isn’t needed anymore even for app like experiences
React is about developer preference over user experience