I have worked on several serious projects with web components, and I work closely with the teams building projects like Photoshop for the web, Reddit, Chrome UI, and Internet Archive. Are those serious enough?

I think the same thing. In theory I would love to use the platform-native approach instead of a framework. In practice it’s an exercise in frustration.

About once a year I give web components another shot and rediscover all the things I hate about them. They are not designed for what web developers consider components and they are full of footguns and bizarre limitations.

Sometimes you will hear this subtly acknowledged as “web components excel at leaf nodes”. What this means in practice is that you shouldn’t use them for things that have contents. They are fine for their original use case, form elements where you don’t want page styles to affect things like the drop-down arrow in the control. But they are a massive disappointment for the typical use case.

Calling someone else boring because they disagree with you instantly makes me think they are right.

I've worked in complex projects with web components. Works fine. Have you?