> On the one hand we have lots of people on here who are building full-featured web apps, not websites, on teams of 30+.
Photopea is a full-featured web app, not website, written without frameworks by a single individual. It is absolutely possible to build feature rich applications without the framework du jour.
Team of 30 people is not needed to write fully featured application.
Team of 30 people is needed to build, run and maintain enterprise applications. Where you might need 24/7 support and such support requires at least 5 FTE, you might need features changed when 3 people go on 2 or 3 weeks vacations. Maybe that single person will come up with something better to do with their life so you need to have some people to take over.
What parent comment was about, people make broad statements not understanding that world is much bigger place.
Yea it is absolutely possible to build an app the way you describe but it doesn’t work for every app everywhere.
The same of course using React/Angular doesn’t work for everything, everywhere.
You missed the "teams of 30+" part. I believe that a single individual who's dedicated to it can absolutely build a lot of cool stuff without frameworks, but there's a reason why large teams working on complex software tend to settle on them.
The only real viable alternative with a large team is a hand rolled framework, which isn't always worth the trade-off.
Photopea is a full-featured web app, not website, written without frameworks by a single individual. It is absolutely possible to build feature rich applications without the framework du jour.