In general it's best to push your comfort boundaries. It's called learning. I'm not saying React is better than Vue (I honestly think they are very similar). Just that picking a technology based on whether it challenges you or not is probably not the best strategy.
I strongly disagree. Parent poster specifically states 'as a long time jquery dev...', so their objectives almost certainly do not aline with those of a student. Indeed, "picking a technology based on whether it challenges you or not..." Has almost no value at all for a prudent, real-world dev making real world software.
I think it has a value if you value long term employability > short term employability.
If you mainly choose technology based on the fact it doesn't take any effort to learn at all, you will soon hit a wall on what software you can use overall.
The problem is experience in jQuery and even Angular 1 are not relevant to the issue of why React (or even Vue for some) may be perceived as difficult. They use a very different model.
Emacs was very difficult for me when I first started learning it. It was much more difficult than using a simple text editor (and this was with 10 years of programming experience)! Yet I persevered and you know what? After giving it some time and learning it properly I found myself vastly more productive with the tool.
Some things don't lend themselves well to immediate gratification. If the OP provided even a hint as to why React was more difficult for him I'm guessing it's not something with React but rather that he was using two completely different state management solutions.
Curious, how long did it take before you before emacs was your go-to choice?
I'm a big vi and sublime text user but always open for better tooling.
btw - I actually agree with you on the learning thing but React just sucks. I'm able to get shit done with Vue and at the end of the week I haven't wasted three afternoons learning jsx/webpack/deployment/relearning-a-new-way-of-doing-css blah blah. I say this with some hesitation but CSS is a solved problem in my opinion with Sass.
