This is definitely a throwback to the days before we had complex JS libraries but I'm not sure if that's a good thing. To me this seems like all the wrong thing

This is definitely a throwback to the days before we had complex JS libraries but I'm not sure if that's a good thing. To me this seems like all the wrong things are being abstracted away and you're left with stuff that should be abstracted. The heavy coupling of the view and the model with no clear controller is blurring the lines too much in what should be a separation of respnsibilities. This could work for tiny applications but for anything moderately complex I predict this quickly turning into ad hoc spaghetti.