Somewhere along the way, building for the web became unnecessarily complex.

Glad other people can recognize this.

The issue is two-fold. Bad developers/designers will do more than is necessary to justify their existence, and businesses with excessive resources want to create a “new normal” where you have to copy them in order to be taken seriously.

That said, I see no reason to use frontend frameworks over the template tag, especially if you’re going to simplicity.