>either Javascript is an intrinsically good language, and you should therefore be able to use it as is, or it is not good, in which case the sane response would be to use it as little as possible.
That's a false dichotomy. There is no such thing as an intrinsically good or bad language, and if the use of frameworks demonstrated the intrinsic flaws of a language, then all web-facing languages would be equally flawed, because no one avoids using frameworks in any of them.
Learning how to write "vanilla" JS (that term really bugs me) and how the DOM actually works is valuable regardless of whether the scale of most modern applications makes it efficient or cost effective to do so.
That's a false dichotomy. There is no such thing as an intrinsically good or bad language, and if the use of frameworks demonstrated the intrinsic flaws of a language, then all web-facing languages would be equally flawed, because no one avoids using frameworks in any of them.
Learning how to write "vanilla" JS (that term really bugs me) and how the DOM actually works is valuable regardless of whether the scale of most modern applications makes it efficient or cost effective to do so.