> reaches for a complicated library way to do it This is neither here nor there. Some people write awful React code too. > having the level of understanding T

> reaches for a complicated library way to do it This is neither here nor there. Some people write awful React code too. > having the level of understanding TO write surgical DOM manip code should be a basic floor of ability for any web developer I mean, knowing how to do it is good and all, but knowing how to do it well is a rare skill. There's a ton of random performance gotchas to be aware of (like, reading a property in the middle of a bunch of writes causing double repaints) and frameworks do consistently apply optimizations that you as a regular dev would probably not ever think of (sorting optimizations being some of the least trivial ones).