[dmethvin]

I completely agree that you can do a lot with jQuery or even plain DOM and JS. It's often the right way to go when there's already back-end structure like Wordpress, Drupal, or ASP.NET and you just need simple things like form validation.

The benefit that frameworks offer is exactly that structure that jQuery doesn't provide (and was never designed to provide). A long-lived SPA needs good structure. If you aren't good at understanding how to create it yourself a framework can save a LOT of work.

[dham]

I'm all for frameworks, because jQuery can eventually get out of hand. I just see a lack of knowledge on how to structure basic DOM code, so that's going to transfer into other frameworks. I'm more of a fan of someone going the DOM api route, seeing the pitfalls, then move to a framework. Not necessarily in the same project, just overall. It's good to see the pitfalls so you know why you're choosing something.