I use React every day. So I know its much easier to update some part of the page using it and a lot of other good stuff. But it has some caveats also. Sometimes I think in Real DOM things were much simpler and convenient to use. I want everyone to discuss what they think about Virtual DOM vs Real DOM.
My answer on StackOverflow may help you a little more. Also, don't forget to look into linked post.
Now, to the direction for your question:
Sometimes I think in Real DOM things were much simpler and convenient to use.
No. I don't think so. Virtual DOM is far better than Real DOM. To agree with this, you may just answer on your own: Is it better to manipulate over DOM using document.querySelector, etc. or mutating the JavaScript object {}?
Changing the object than working on DOM is more faster.
Tommy Hodgins
CSS & Element Queries
I really like working with DOM since that's all you're ever guaranteed to have access to - even if there is a virtual DOM putting a site together, you may not have the access you need to add to that in the right way. For that reason I prefer to stick with abstractions that can run on regular DOM and hope that if I'm in a situation where I can make use of a virtual DOM, my code will be flexible enough to work there too, but I don't know how many virtual DOM plugins and code can work on regular DOM if you needed to use them outside of that one particular workflow.