Nice article thanks. I might try this approach as well. I maintain a large django app, heavy on the back end and light on the front end. We've been discussing modernizing the front end, which is based on jquery and bootstrap, but the instability of the JS ecosystem really frightens me. As a very small startup, we can't afford the overhead of keeping up with everything that's going on.
Maybe you're right. Vanilla JS and CSS may actually be good enough for a good enough time. Plus, it brings back memories of simpler view-source times.