I&#x27;d like to add to morgante&#x27;s excellent comment:<p>You don&#x27;t need any of these things, but they make it so much nicer and easier to write an application. You can easily write a React app without them, but it&#x27;s less fun and it takes more time.<p>The point of the boilerplate is to let you focus on writing your application, and let the boilerplate take care of making that experience a very nice one.