Exactly. For simple sites, I pretty much avoid all frameworks/libraries. However, I use babel/webpack though I really like webpack-dev-server and the full set

Exactly. For simple sites, I pretty much avoid all frameworks/libraries. However, I use babel/webpack though I really like webpack-dev-server and the full set of es6 features. I disagree with the React statement. I believe it's really simple on it's own. Flux/Redux add a lot of complexity, but confers significant gains. The new site I'm writing for work isn't just some stupid CRUD site - it's a complex UI used to monitor and manage industrial assets. Having the ability to organize long data flows and actions makes the code much easier to read and write, especially for other developers. If I had to manually manipulate the DOM (especially for making everything responsive) I'd go nuts. The thing about these tools are that once you learn them well, they save you a lot of time.