This is correct: I like having full control over the application behaviour (at least down to the browser), and for a relatively small implementation like this,

This is correct: I like having full control over the application behaviour (at least down to the browser), and for a relatively small implementation like this, it's quite manageable. I make no claim this is sensible, but I've been bitten by obscure bugs in large libraries before and this way I find debugging is much easier, because I typically only have to worry about my own code. I'm not sure I would recommend this strategy to others. It very much comes down to a personal preference, and I imagine using an existing framework would be much more accessible to someone starting frontend development. I feel I might get some stick if I were to suggest this to newcomers :) I'm afraid I don't know of any existing write-ups!