You can use it for only a part of your UI, and you can implement any parts of your UI that are embedded within react components without react as well. It doesn't lock you into doing things its way in any manner whatsoever, it is literally just a library with functionality that you can utilize wherever relevant in your app.
> completely changes how you write your frontend
JSX is not an integral part of react. It's quite feasible to use react without using JSX, and I have done so in the past in some of my side projects when I wanted to avoid setting up a build system for a while. JSX just compiles down to plain old function calls, and you can use those directly without JSX without any issues.
> (JS -> JSX with embedded HTML)
JSX doesn't really have embedded HTML, it's just syntactic sugar for plain function calls that only somewhat approximates HTML.
> has lots of react-* libs built around it
Which are usually either libs that implement a react component with react or just wrap some non-react library in a way that's slightly easier to use than using the library directly in an app using react, but it's not like that latter is impossible or even difficult.
> comes with a script initializing an app skeleton
Such scripts exist, but they are not integral parts of react and are by no means required to use react. React is just a library, and if you want to, you can use it without doing anything else except including a single .js file with a <script> in your html file, even if the more usual way of including react in your project is a lot more convoluted.
Yes, you can use React not like a framework, but very few people do that. If you say you're using React, it's assumed you're doing it the usual way (with JSX and all).
You can use it for only a part of your UI, and you can implement any parts of your UI that are embedded within react components without react as well. It doesn't lock you into doing things its way in any manner whatsoever, it is literally just a library with functionality that you can utilize wherever relevant in your app.
> completely changes how you write your frontend
JSX is not an integral part of react. It's quite feasible to use react without using JSX, and I have done so in the past in some of my side projects when I wanted to avoid setting up a build system for a while. JSX just compiles down to plain old function calls, and you can use those directly without JSX without any issues.
> (JS -> JSX with embedded HTML)
JSX doesn't really have embedded HTML, it's just syntactic sugar for plain function calls that only somewhat approximates HTML.
> has lots of react-* libs built around it
Which are usually either libs that implement a react component with react or just wrap some non-react library in a way that's slightly easier to use than using the library directly in an app using react, but it's not like that latter is impossible or even difficult.
> comes with a script initializing an app skeleton
Such scripts exist, but they are not integral parts of react and are by no means required to use react. React is just a library, and if you want to, you can use it without doing anything else except including a single .js file with a <script> in your html file, even if the more usual way of including react in your project is a lot more convoluted.