I feel like there is a middle ground which is being excluded. I'm leaning towards alpine.js or similar lightweight JS frameworks which have better ergonomics than react or plain JS. Webcomponents also without Vue or React are a nice solution.
Oh definitely - I'm not an absolutist. I just want to have the least amount of contact with those aspects of the Javascript ecosystem that take me further away from HTML over HTTP and progressive enhancement.
And I fully accept that "web apps" probably need complex frameworks. I just think most people aren't really building web apps - they are building web sites.
And even if it was - I would be prepared to suffer a lot of pain to avoid the javascript build pipeline and framework churn.
SPA frameworks drove me away from front-end dev and HTMX is making me consider returning.