Why would one choose Vue over React except for the goal of making the project "easier to jump into" for "more junior developers" and sort of accessible to "designer-developers" too?
The way I see it Vue complicates the logic of the app (due to two-way-binding, observable state etc.), it does decrease some the boilerplate needed at the beginning, but makes getting started or doing simple UI tweaks accessible for juniors devs / designer-developers / "web-developers". (React is well known for the fact that once an app grows beyond a certain size only actual "javascript engineers" can touch it, it's no longer intelligible to "designer-developers", and it can have a codebase specific learning curve for every junior dev joining the team.)
EDIT+: To clarify, the way I see it, React's advantage is its simplicity, the core conceptual logic of things is very simple/mentally-compact, you can "run around with the whole thing loaded up in your head" easily. Yes, it does require more in terms of "IQ/cleverness" and also some "sense of architecture" from developers in exchange for being able to wield this simplicity without "cutting yourself", but I'd say it's worth it. I'd say React is the "catana sword" of web frameworks in a way :)
> Why would one choose Vue over React except for the goal of making the project "easier to jump into" for "more junior developers" and sort of accessible to "designer-developers" too?
In my (admittedly inexperienced w.r.t. Vue) view, that is exactly the reason for Vue's popularity, and a perfectly fine one at that.
What I've seen from GitLab's workflow is that their front-end developers are not of the "SPA type", for lack of a better term, but more of the "design a page using HTML+CSS and add some Javascript for interactivity" type (same lack of a proper term). And that's perfectly fine; I'd presume they work more closely with designers or take up some design work themselves, and would at least expect them to be proficient in areas like accessibility much like many in the industry are not.
I think what's the better choice mostly depends on how one's organisation is structured. Though honestly, either would probably have worked just fine, and it's mostly a matter of nuance.
The way I see it Vue complicates the logic of the app (due to two-way-binding, observable state etc.), it does decrease some the boilerplate needed at the beginning, but makes getting started or doing simple UI tweaks accessible for juniors devs / designer-developers / "web-developers". (React is well known for the fact that once an app grows beyond a certain size only actual "javascript engineers" can touch it, it's no longer intelligible to "designer-developers", and it can have a codebase specific learning curve for every junior dev joining the team.)
EDIT+: To clarify, the way I see it, React's advantage is its simplicity, the core conceptual logic of things is very simple/mentally-compact, you can "run around with the whole thing loaded up in your head" easily. Yes, it does require more in terms of "IQ/cleverness" and also some "sense of architecture" from developers in exchange for being able to wield this simplicity without "cutting yourself", but I'd say it's worth it. I'd say React is the "catana sword" of web frameworks in a way :)