When I first started at my current company, everything was written in jQuery. It was a jumbled mess with thousands of duplicated jQuery code and HTML. The sligh

When I first started at my current company, everything was written in jQuery. It was a jumbled mess with thousands of duplicated jQuery code and HTML. The slightest change would make us cringe. Granted this was a poorly designed application from the start, but still. I learned how to build dynamic web pages off of jQuery and for that I'm very grateful. I also appreciated the way there was little overhead if you just wanted to create something simple. When HQ gave our business unit the task of redesigning the entire UI in whatever way we wanted - as long as it looked like the mockups - we decided it was time to move on from JQuery. I had some experience with Angular 2+ at the time, so I tried that one first, but it was too heavy. Same with React for the reasons you outlined. The learning curve on both were steep as well. Then I came across Vue. When I learned I could easily create an app as quickly as I could in jQuery, without all the dependencies, I knew I found a winner. We moved forward with Vue and although eventually we couldn't avoid npm/node, I still think it's the most beginner friendly and lightest JS framework of them all. That's just my opinion of course, i'm sure plenty will disagree. Here's an article demonstrating how it can be used without node/npm: https://medium.com/@steveolensky/create-a-spa-vuejs-application-without-node-webpack-or-any-other-build-process-using-vue-router-b9bf8e36e958 https://medium.com/@steveolensky/create-a-spa-vuejs-applicat... EDIT: BTW that article includes Vue-Router and some other frameworks, but you don't have to use any of it. You can simply include vue.js into your HTML pages just like jQuery and write Vanilla JS for the most part, with the added benefit of turning duplicate code into components. Win-win.