Writing Vanilla JS is error-prone unless you are very disciplined, writing "Vanilla" CSS is OK for the most part, Vanilla HTML is fine. It's best to use some tooling, but there are dozens to choose from.
Please don't hurt OP. They're new to this and want help.
They should avoid web tooling forever if they want to maintain their sanity. It's just a mess of a hundred and one tools that all do half of what every other one does, built by people who just refuse to get along and standardise on the Best Way ™ to do things.
the absolute state of web developers in 2022
You also lose a lot of niceties with DX, like TS and components.
Both companies I worked for in the early 2010's ended up recreating their own (subpar) implementations of what React does.
While I do agree the bar to get started on the web is too high, I feel like it's never been so low?
React and frameworks like Next.js have been great to use. Much better than what I was using back then.
I don't have experience with e.g. Laravel/Ruby on Rails though. Are these any easier to work with?
I want to make a simple app where users can create and fill out a form. ATC test plans, to be exact.