The New WordPress.com VS Sitecake

The WP dashboard can, and has been rewritten in React, see Calypso, but it was rejected by wp.org community at the time (likely for the reasons you mentioned). Source: over 2 years ago

The wp-admin dash itself will likely move to React in the far future. It's a big undertaking, and not a priority, or even wanted at this point by the wordpress.org maintainers and community - wordpress.com already has a React powered dash that even predates Gutenberg, calypso, and the open-source maintainers rejected using it as its not suitable for their developer audience. Source: over 2 years ago

Use something like this? CMS that generates static html? https://sitecake.com/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago

I think that user experience of website builders with wysiwyg and drag and drop UX won over time. Then, as time passed by, website builders become bloated and complex. Once again you needed a professional to maintain your site in site builder. So now simple solutions, static HTML, free or one-time fee CMSs are sexy again. (economy is not good, who wants another subscription?) I know because 14 years ago we have... - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago

Https://sitecake.com/ works with simple html and PHP sites.... Veeeerrrry simple for client edits. Source: over 2 years ago

May be a suitable use case for https://sitecake.com/. Source: over 2 years ago

Other than that: Inline Editing CMS examples: Coast CMS, all you need to do is make the html editable with some classes and you're done. The CMS is kind of outdated though. Other examples: simplyedit.io, surrealcms.com, jocms.net, inlinecms.com, sitecake.com. Source: about 3 years ago