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.
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