I prefer opinionated, integrated frameworks. I can count on the whole stack being well tested and don't have to worry about subtle bugs and versioning issues between components.
The JS community has gone way overboard on factoring everything into a dozen little submodules, IMO.
While I feel like I'm close enough to tame the React ecosystem (and like it!), I honestly agree. Personally I do prefer opinionated. Luckily Ember exists in the JS world.
Ember is awesome, it doesn't seem to get much love on HNews though. Which is a shame because its really really good - I tried react and spent 2 days messing with various starter packs, trying to get webpack configured and not getting anywhere. Ember took me half an hour to get started.
Because Ember devs already found the best tool years ago and they are super productive. The community is huge and super active but they definitely totally ignore this "fatigue" bullshit... you know, if you found your love of your life, you don't go any more in the dance club to chase other boys/girls... ;)
Ember 2 was released middle of last year and the transition was super smooth. Ember's update pipeline is strict and the backward compatibility is serious. Big startups and corporates are switching to Ember, because they want results... Luckily, we can say, at the moment Ember.js is at least 1 year, but more likely 2 years ahead of other js libraries and frameworks. The framework really matured, the best bet nowadays if someone plan to build larger frontend application.
The JS community has gone way overboard on factoring everything into a dozen little submodules, IMO.