> JSX is not a requirement for using React. Using React without JSX is especially convenient when you don't want to set up compilation in your build environment.

> Each JSX element is just syntactic sugar for calling React.createElement(component, props, ...children). So, anything you can do with JSX can also be done with just plain JavaScript.

Source: https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/react-without-jsx.html

Sure. At the bare minimum, you write "manual" `React.createElement()` calls. To simplify or shorten things, you can alias `React.createElement()` to something like `h()`.

There's also a variety of libs to help with that process. We have an existing ES5/Backbone app that's built with Require.js, and we don't have a "compile" step in there. We just added our first couple React+Redux-based features into that codebase, but can't use JSX due to that lack of compilation. I opted to bring in https://github.com/Jador/react-hyperscript-helpers as an alternative to JSX. Not perfect, but it's a suitable alternative given our limitations. There's several other "virtual DOM/hyperscript"-ish packages out there as well.

It's basically just to use the React.createElement API that JSX transpiles to. I say give JSX a chance though.

I had an initial negative reaction to JSX, as well. It grows on you, though.

Might I suggest .dom[0] instead of React if you are planning to use plain JS. It is tiny and has a slightly simpler API which is nice for plain ES6

[0]: https://github.com/wavesoft/dot-dom

Just React.js Please

http://designbymobi.us/just-react-js-please/