Disclaimer: I'm the author of one of the frameworks mentioned in this thread. Yes, HTML/CSS/JS are perfectly fine tools for web development. But just like it's

Disclaimer: I'm the author of one of the frameworks mentioned in this thread. Yes, HTML/CSS/JS are perfectly fine tools for web development. But just like it's not as efficient to use a hammer as a nail gun, using HTML/CSS/JS alone might not be the best choice if you're trying to build something highly interactive or if you have other concerns (e.g. a very large team that consistently steps on each others' toes on accident). I'd encourage that you try to actually take HTML/CSS/JS as far as you can take them, if nothing else to experience the pain points of using them at high levels of complexity yourself. This can give you an appreciation for why frameworks do things the way they do. For example, routers are patterns that every framework dealing w/ parameterized pages eventually lands on because it's a pattern that makes it easier to manage page parameterization. It can be argued that some frameworks land on seemingly strange or overly complicated APIs sometimes, but that's just the realities of engineering. We try to make the best decisions with the known information at the time, and then we have to consider maintenance costs after the fact. Nobody is perfect and sometimes we only see flaws in an approach through hindsight. There's also such a thing as using the wrong tool for the job. Frameworks usually have scope and an idiomatic way of being used. These indicates which use cases the frameworks are strong for, and which aren't. Most self-respecting frameworks will have some sort of tutorial that you can follow to get a feel for what type of tasks they are trying to optimize for. Try them out to see if that's what you need. If it's not, that's ok, there are plenty of other tools that could fit the bill better. My recommendation would be to try different "categories" of frameworks. For example, React/Vue/Svelte are very similar in scope, so trying one should give you an idea of what all three are more or less all about. You could try htmx, or GWT or even jQuery to experience completely different flavors of "framework-ness", maybe one of those will "click" better. Maybe you'll find that vanilla HTML/CSS/JS is all you need after all, and that's ok too.