I use both frameworks and non frameworks on different sites, some extremely large and some small. You can shoot yourself in the foot with either and I wouldn't

I use both frameworks and non frameworks on different sites, some extremely large and some small. You can shoot yourself in the foot with either and I wouldn't make a blanket statement that one way is better than the other. I don't like the trend of using React to build a brochure level website with near zero ui interactions or api calls, it usually ends up bloated and a pain to try to split code, reduce bundle size, etc. for no real gains. On the other hand, when I work on a complex stock brokerage dashboard with tons of data, tons of fancy ui that needs frequent updating, and a massive internal state with tons of user data and stock data (also being frequently updated), React is a pretty good choice. One of my other sites is a legacy property with all UI powered by a single 6000 line jQuery and javascript file. It's very easy to break something without realizing trying to make changes there, so people keep adding new stuff at the bottom to minimize potential breaking changes. Definitely not the ideal vanilla JS setup but it isn't a good fit for the organization's needs. At the end of the day, react is javascript and you can make any react site with plain javascript... but it is sometimes a useful abstraction for highly complex environments with many people working on them.