I think the conventional dogma that one must resort to a framework for a large web app is wrong.
Your assumption that simpler is more "hacky" or less efficient, just isn't true. One can use built-in constructs like for loops in vanilla JS to update multiple DOM nodes at once, this yields the most optimal performance. Or one could use React/Redux and setup an action and a reducer and action creator and action type constant and... you see where this is going.
> One can use built-in constructs like for loops in vanilla JS to update multiple DOM nodes at once
That's not the kind of use case that'd require React. I think we're on the same page that for the majority of apps, that setup is overkill. I'm just pointing out that there are apps with complex use cases where the "see where this is going" will end up being more elegant/simpler than fleshing out your own constructs (certainly more than a for loop)
Your assumption that simpler is more "hacky" or less efficient, just isn't true. One can use built-in constructs like for loops in vanilla JS to update multiple DOM nodes at once, this yields the most optimal performance. Or one could use React/Redux and setup an action and a reducer and action creator and action type constant and... you see where this is going.