so, yes, you are not wrong. the issue here is the differential of 'managing complexity' with regards to time. as the functionality of the app progresses beyond

so, yes, you are not wrong. the issue here is the differential of 'managing complexity' with regards to time. as the functionality of the app progresses beyond a certain complexity (admittedly, this is nebulously defined), increasing changes to complexity require more time to effect. beyond a certain point of functionality, the need for a a framework to manage these things becomes emergent. at that point, a single coder can resume making more complex changes with the aide of the framework, than she could do without it. you're not wrong, you just are not considering a big enough scope over which to evaluate what the manual manipulation of software primitives is worth. in the end, frameworks aide results beyond the ability of a single coder to implement on their own.