I'd argue it's more complicated by way of how much confusion I see with newbies. The old class-based lifecycle+methods was pretty straightforward - it only looked complicated at a glance. Hooks on the other hand do enough magic in the background that each one seems to come with its own set of misconceptions that have to be corrected.
The ironic thing is that hooks are marketed by the react docs as being the solution to avoiding the "difficulty" newbs have with classes.
Which I (as a proponent of hooks) think is fucking batshit insane, and clearly shows the disconnect of the React devs from their user base.
Teaching beginners how to code, and how to use React, is a large part of my job. And I can say with absolute conviction that the React team is wrong about this. The 'hooks' whiteboarding session has gotten me far more blank stares than the 'classes and lifecycles' one ever has.
Having said that, as a senior dev with a ton of React projects under my belt, I definitely prefer the hooks paradigm after using it in a few projects. It makes for cleaner code, and certain concepts are much easier to reason about with the hooks model. Just don't ever expect it to give you a cleaner on-boarding process. That's not at all where the benefit lies, despite what the docs tell you.
Should probably dump it here myself: My experience is mainly with co-workers (years of experience) and new hires (just out of college/bootcamp) who can code, but haven't yet used React.
Yeah my experience is pretty much all with beginners (usually fresh out of a bootcamp or college, or switching from tangentially related industries like CSE).
I'd be interested to see how someone who was a beginner but learnt via FP would grasp each approach. I've never met one in the wild though, it's not like bootcamps start with Haskell.
