Here are my thoughts, but you won't like them. Stop with the frameworks. Learn Javascript. Learn CSS. Learn HTML. You'll find pretty quickly that what you need are libraries, not frameworks. Things like jQuery, underscore, etc...
>Stop with the frameworks. Learn Javascript. Learn CSS. Learn HTML.
I don't code in JS. Maybe a few lines once in a while when it pops up. It just seems like an MVC framework is the javascript equivalent of writing your first recursive factorial function.
The fact of the matter is large code bases need to be supported over time by diverse groups of people and frameworks help enforce standards that get people up to speed quickly.
That developer I knew, he has been chronically unemployed for the last 5 years because he lacks the skills to work as part of a team. Great coder though!
The majority of the Web apps is CRUD + a bit of logic. It makes much more sense to use a framework because 1) most of the things are already there 2) easier to maintain for someone from outside 3) and, most importantly, very few developers have skills to create a nice, maintainable design, accompanied with a useful documentation.
Yes, in ideal world, maybe you should be able to stay framework-less (just made that word up) but the world isn't ideal. We have to sacrifice philosophical ideals for the business because that's what pays the living.
In rare cases, when the app is much more than a simple CRUD, it might make sense to ditch frameworks... But it's very, very rare.
I'll add an addendum to my post that frameworks can be the right tool for the job. But 99% of the time they're used the wrong way and for the wrong purpose.
>Things like jQuery, underscore, etc...
Sounds great until you have a team of 5 developers maintaining at least a semi-huge code base over the course of some years. Some people leave, new join the team.
Then you really start appreciating frameworks if only for their conventions to structure the code. Top coders can write web apps with jQuery and underscore alone, but everyone else is better off following some conventions.
If your code degrade over time, sorry to tell you, a framework won't solve the problem.
If you have coders that don't care about maintainability of code correction, code organization in whatever technology, they won't care about what you wish.
As usual, they won't take the time to learn the frameworks, will diverge, and you are back to square one with no code that can be salvaged or reused. (at least with vanilla techs you may salvage stuffs)
I think you use frameworks to solve the wrong problems here: you are probably the problem by trying to ditch the lack of real engineering skills in IT (not the letter of engineering. The spirit: making things that are correctly built and are reliable over time... like a plane).
This is all nice and well in academics and start-ups but some years down the road, your code is going to be a mess. Frameworks, especially opinionated frameworks are a tremendous help. Coding in jQuery or native JS without some prodding is at best an accident waiting to happen.
You eventually end up writing your own framework of sorts anyway when you take minimal path.
Angular can be quite fast compared to jQuery in an app of substance. It is not constantly reading/writing to the DOM in most cases, which saves a lot on the performance front. It is also a smaller library than jQuery, and you're not naively applying global or complicated selectors. Plugins rewritten to be pure javascript + Angular also can have a much smaller footprint & be more powerful to boot, such as the Angular UI Bootstrap project (5 KB minified & gzipped as opposed to 15-35 KB? I forget Bootstrap's js size) & contains all of the power of Angular to modify your functionality with them & more.
How do you refactor out bloat from a framework without throwing away the framework?
This is my whole point about not using frameworks. They're a siren that WILL eat you in the end.
Of course, if a framework automates a ton of functionality, it'll naturally be inappropriate for certain projects. I wouldn't try to use Angular for an HTML 5 game, for example, though there's a good chance I wouldn't use jQuery either.
I actually did use Angular for an HTML5 game last week as part of a demo for a conference. Admittedly it was a really simple game (tic tac toe), and it did use Polymer as well as angular, as sort of an experiment. But it worked pretty well, and only took about a day and a half to hack together, with realtime multiplayer and chat using socket.io.
Obviously you're going to run into things that Angular is not really ideal for, but we are trying to make it do what it does very, very well, so in the future it should be suitable for pretty much any mobile or desktop app.
---
This sounds like evangelism, which is not my intent, you're absolutely right about what you're saying, but it's true, sometimes a framework works (and saves a ton of time) that you'd otherwise spend hacking together something awful. Hopefully this mithril thing also saves people a ton of time without them having to worry about numerous other issues.
After building/using Composer.js (http://lyonbros.github.io/composer.js/) extensively I inevitably end up reimplementing parts of it on projects that don't use it because it makes some things so easy.
That said, if you're learning javascript, stay away from frameworks at all costs.
Your view is limiting