You can think however you wish - and I agree with you - but if you want to be competitive in the modern job market as a web developer, you have to be fluent in client side frameworks.

This depends:

If you're advocating for traditional server-rendered websites (perhaps with very small bits of interactivity via JS), then you're #3: A backend developer.

If you're suggesting building a complex client-side app, just without a framework, then I reckon that this is just a variant of #1. But you'd better be a very experienced developer, or your code is going to be a complete mess. This isn't really a viable path for a new developer just starting out.

It's all about using the correct tool for the job.

Define "heavy." Right now I have react, material-ui and a handful of libraries in an application with an initial load (through main entry point) under 80k gzipped, and under 300k total load (1.6mb in memory, which includes app configuration data) when you navigate through to an area with graphs. This also includes SVG manipulation and image overlays.

In terms of what is being done, I'm far more judicious with removing unnecessary libraries. I've followed up other developers removing any number of modules in favor of hand-crafting from baseline modules. Since it's JSS it includes semi-dynamic styling that is based on async loaded modules. ex: if you don't go onto a chart/graph page, you don't get those modules.

It really depends on your tooling, knowledge and what your needs are. IMHO it's far better than typical jquery + bootstrap + bootstrap extensions that many of those who look down on client-side frameworks lean towards.

I'd go so far as to question the experience of someone who doesn't see value in React or frameworks similar to it for web applications. There's a large contingent that advocates for bare-bones JS development, but minimalism for the sake of it is not worthwhile.

It's all patchwork on top of JavaScript, though. Another programming language like Elm, or something that compiles to WebAssembly, may be another option to consider.

If your projects are simple enough that using a framework is a bad idea it's a waste of money to hire the #1 types.

That is basically what he lists under number 2, "classic web developer".