not op, but i'm presently working on a project with a simple old school “no clientside deps, complex logic goes on the server” requirement, and i don't actually feel like i'm doing anything much different than when i work on react.

the project is pretty simple, and modern js is significantly improved, so the notion that you have to reinvent the wheel seems false.

In my experience code written with frameworks is equally lacking in documentation. Writing to the DOM and maintaining state are tiny beginner things that don’t require much documentation since the DOM and web storage are standards and already well documented. It’s the actual code the developers are actually writing that needs, and lacks, documentation.

When I mentioned in my comment above that writing is one of only two things separating a novice from an expert I wasn’t being clever.