One way to look at this is that frameworks are like a mechanics shop, or a carpentry shop. They have their own work flow, their own set of tools, etc etc... j

One way to look at this is that frameworks are like a mechanics shop, or a carpentry shop. They have their own work flow, their own set of tools, etc etc... jQuery and small code snippets are the tools. The hammer, the wrench. When building a site, you don't need the whole mechanic shop (most times) but you need just the hammer. Along with that, a mechanic shop isn't going to work for every case. What happens if you have a mechanic shop and now you are just doing tires. Its not a hard change, but what if instead, you are a mechanic shop, but now you have start building cabinets instead. That mechanic shop isn't going to work. You can't change the lifts to start putting cabinets together. I think the best way to look at it, is use what you need. You don't need a 140 piece tool set to hammer a nail.