When I was first looking into Single Page App frameworks, I came across the usual Angular/Ember.js recommendations and tried to get started with them multiple times. I couldn't get myself to stick with them and always went back to mostly server-side rendering with jQuery / Ajax / Pjax tech until I tried React.js later.
The primary reason for my dislike in using the Angular/Ember type frameworks is that they have their extensive custom template code and directives that to me was basically like learning a whole new language -- I had no desire to learn things like the framework's method of doing a foreach loop in their own custom way when I can just use JS' foreach with React. I was also not a fan of throwing in all the non-standard tags into my HTML. With React I can write the view in JS or, my preferred method, JSX which is basically plain HTML with curly brackets for variables that compiles into pure JS.
I agree. While I'm not as familiar with Ember, one of the things that has kept me from using Angular on more than a few complex pages, is that I would have to rewrite all of the otherwise-functional Handlebars templates we have made thus far. I've even done six or seven custom directives now, and have a feel for "the power of directives" (having heard that phrase a lot), but it certainly isn't what I use most of the time.
But this is all an aside from the point of "templates" in general.
When I think "templates" I tend to think first of something lightweight like Mustache or Handlebars templates, that I can render client-side (and server-side!) without worrying about anything beyond decorating HTML with a few curly-braces.
The primary reason for my dislike in using the Angular/Ember type frameworks is that they have their extensive custom template code and directives that to me was basically like learning a whole new language -- I had no desire to learn things like the framework's method of doing a foreach loop in their own custom way when I can just use JS' foreach with React. I was also not a fan of throwing in all the non-standard tags into my HTML. With React I can write the view in JS or, my preferred method, JSX which is basically plain HTML with curly brackets for variables that compiles into pure JS.