As someone with a 'full stack' history (ie basic front end knowledge compared to a full-timer on that coal face every day), I do notice a lot of the stuff jQuer

As someone with a 'full stack' history (ie basic front end knowledge compared to a full-timer on that coal face every day), I do notice a lot of the stuff jQuery does is now native to the browser, like being able to use fetch with promises in a few lines of code, or select stuff with querySelector(All)? or xpath. Then all the nice additions to CSS (and HTTP, no more sprites) that weren't possible in the past and remove the need for frameworks. I tend to rely on Bootstrap so the layout is reasonable on mobile- but that's purely through my own lack of experience. But I guess someone with a more intimate knowledge can easily get the idea of building a framework. Then add on all the use cases and feature requests... Some web pages, particularly traditional media websites are absolute hell holes of bloat, but I guess that's more about their ad serving than lean web development.