I'm a great fan of KendoUI and love the declarative binding and property declaration with JavaScript Literal notation.  However, Rest Binding in SharePoint is still immature and there is very little support for relationships and data projections.  As a result, I find myself coming back to the SPRadGrid.  However, I find the functionality very limited and in some cases non-functional.  I'd love to see a rewrite of the SPRadGrid that has more functions and used declarative bindings.    I'd also like to see  solution package distributed with a working Grid sample so that it was easier to modify it and deploy a customized solution.  SharePoint is complex.  It's always easier to start with a working sample.