You're not stupid for using a framework, and nobody has pulled a fast one on you. https://seldo.com/posts/the_case_for_frameworks
The case for frameworks

Today I read Alex Russell's post The Market for Lemons and I found myself compelled to write a rebuttal. I am a big fan of Alex's work in general but not of this post in particular, which is very long, so allow me to attempt to summarize it

@seldo economics indeed but the changing storyline is also well documented (yes that's grifting!)

And also ppl need to know how HTML/etc work in order to use React not the other way around.

@brianleroux I do not think everybody is using React because Guillermo is just really, really persuasive.
@seldo @brianleroux You're stating this like it's facially ridiculous, but I don't see why it is. "Persuasive" not just meaning personally persuasive, but persuasive with the backing and credibility of Facebook? This does not seem particularly far-fetched.
@agocke @brianleroux Millions and million of developers are using React. In surveys I run they report high satisfaction with React. They're not just using it because they were impressed with it, or because somebody told them to. Developers really like React, and I have thousands of data points to prove it.
@seldo @brianleroux Fair enough, but I think it's a point you have to argue with data! Not immediately obvious.

@agocke @seldo I didn't see the part where anyone was debating devs like it or use it.

The points made by Alex and others are concerned with the poor outputs and the advocates changing their stories. (See your colleagues Zach's post about React criticism for ex.)

@brianleroux @agocke The flaw in Alex's argument is that he focuses only on the (admittedly bad!) results React gets for low-power mobile devices. My point is that developers are not *unaware* of the bad outcomes, they like React *despite* the bad outcomes, so let's look at why. The idea that developers  cannot see that bad outcomes, poor creatures, only Alex can, is why the whole thing comes off as insulting.
@seldo @brianleroux @agocke junior developers using the top of the line MacBook Pro supplied by their company on corporate gigabit internet and/or running a dev server on localhost certainly can’t see those outcomes, unless their teams invest heavily in instrumentation, profiling, observability, regression testing, etc., which many teams are not only unwilling to do, but also unaware of at all. not talking about top sites here
@exchgr @brianleroux @agocke I have spent a great deal of time talking to junior devs just coming out of bootcamps and I simply do not believe that they are unaware of the tradeoffs they are making. They are junior so they are both less empowered by the organization to effect change and less experienced at writing things quickly that would be better, so they can do less to ameliorate the bad outcomes, but I refuse to accept they're unaware of them.
@seldo @brianleroux @agocke aware or not, it’s what they tend to do, and so we need more mentorship and apprenticeship, even in the form of pairing/mobbing with more senior devs, to guide them in a better direction. and imo, junior devs shouldn’t be making big architectural decisions like that on their own. if they are, that’s an organizational failing
@exchgr @seldo @brianleroux @agocke like the intern that takes down production servers. It shouldn’t have been possible in the first place.