What would the alternative be? How can you design a UI without nesting things?

Too much nesting usually signals that you should decompose it to smaller components.

Same as with regular code and functions — overly deep nesting screams bad code.

Honestly, JSX is just a verbose way of calling functions / constructing objects, which is probably OK if it was a language of its own (XML/HTML) — and even then, JSON/YAML won over XML — but makes little sense being embedded in a language which had functions & object literals from the get-go (JS)!

The only reason JSX exists is because it was a cool marketing feature to convert existing PHP/HTML developers to React. And React succeeded mostly because of that. Not because JSX is cool technology-wise (it isn't). But because it hit the right spot in the right time.

Well said! You got the point.

Not to me, it isn’t. It aligns with how the box model itself works.