> a whole different statement than saying "Vue's syntax is orders of magnitude more complex and very inconsistent". That's just plain wrong.

There is an easy test to see if my statement was true or false:

    <tag attr="x">

where "attr" is a Vue attribute. What is x and what can x be? An expression? A string? A function reference? An object? How will it be processed and presented in the end? As a string? As a function call?

At any given point in time the value in an attribute is entirely dependent on context (which particular Vue attribute it's in) and on a very arbitrarily defined rules for those attributes. For example, v-on accepts three absolutely different and incompatible things:

   v-on:click="x + 1" 
       A Javascript expression
   
   v-on:click="function_ref" 
       A function reference bound to JS-code

   v-on:click="function_call(param1, param2)" 
       Looks like a function call but isn't. It's a way to
       declare a function ref that will be called with bound params

And that's just one of the tags! I'm not even touching on the JS side of things where magic is abound (see comments at the end here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17471199)

Compare to React's JSX:

    <tag attr="x"> // x is a string
    <tag attr={{ x }}> // x is a valid Javascript expression

These are the same and they are consistent for every single attribute. The only limitations come from the meaning and the usage of the attributes themselves.

    <tag onClick={{ function_ref }}>
    <tag onClick={{ () => regular_JS_arrow_function() }}>
       onClick expects a function reference because that's
       what it will eventually call

And the rest around JSX? Plain old Javascript. Where this:

    {
      data: function () {
        return {
          open: false
        }
      }
    }

doesn't magically turn into this in a completely different part of the object:

    {
      methods: {
        toggle: function () {
            this.open = !this.open
        }
    }