Yeah, I can see the value in redux for a big app with lots of complex state to manage (eg Facebook), but it seems like major overkill in a lot of smaller apps where people seem to be reaching for it by default for some reason. Plain React components and a few helper modules can get you a surprisingly long way--there's really no need for more framework until deeply nested components make simple argument passing unweildy.
I saw this from Redux's creator that aligns with my take: "When people say setState() is an anti-pattern, they mean 500-line components with a complex setState() soup scattered across event handlers. When you spend your days looking for bugs in those handlers and moving them up and down component hierarchy, consider extracting it." https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/725090047557558272
I had that whole 'moving values and events up and down the component hierarchy, driving me nuts' thing going on when I tried to make an editor page for a two-level list. I added Redux and now I just directly read/update the list in the store from every component in the editor.
