I am a proponent of using Vanilla JS [1,2,3,4] wherever possible. It is plain JavaScript without external frameworks. In my last two jobs, I built many feature-rich and cross platform apps using HTML5, JavaScript and CSS, without depending on the popular frameworks such as jQuery, React or Angular. There are numerous articles on the web about the benefits (and problems) of using plain JS, i.e., without frameworks. Here, I present my thoughts and some reading list for developers who want to avoid frameworks too if possible.