In a few years the React/Vue fad will be gone, while HTML/CSS/VanilaJS will still be around.
We are the ones not wasting time learning fad of the day stacks.
Certainly. However, something even better will replace it and you guys will moan about it again. It only hurts yourself if you refuse to learn.
Coffeescript, Dart, AngularJS, Dojo, MooTools, Prototype, Bower,...
So much time I saved keeping focused on SSR frameworks, alongside VanillaJS.
I used to look down on something like Next.js/Nuxt.js [1] for simple (and advanced) websites until I used it and I'm 100% convinced it's the future of web development. Where most of the content is built with components but pre-rendered server-side and the JS loads to 'hydrate' the interface with interactive elements. I've stopped using heavy frameworks like Phoenix as a result and switching to simpler backends APIs written in Rust/Ruby/etc with Vue SRR handling the full frontend.
Combined with treeshaking, chunked JS via webpack (which automatically only renders tiny .js files on-demand based on what components the page/route needs), purgeCSS which removes all unused CSS, PWA/critical inlined CSS tools, and other easy-to-use optimizations you can have a fully feature-rich JS site with SEO-friendly HTML pages and very fast page loads.
We're just seeing the beginning of Vue/React and it's going to improve the web from the ills of the past, not make it worse. Better performance and more importantly high-quality well composed codebases, plus TypeScript which helps JS applications scale in size while keeping them sane.