I appreciate the sentiment, but can't agree fully. I used vanilla JS for many years before AngularJS even existed (and I also tried AngulasJS when it was the new thing).

Vue is just a huge convenience over raw JavaScript for large, complex view. Sure, I don't get to do direct DOM manipulation, but when I write C code I also don't get to pick which variable goes in which CPU register. I accept giving up control that ASM would give me, for all the improvements that C brings on top of it, even if C just compiles to ASM and is an abstraction on top of it.

Writing programs in C has simplified developer experience over Assembly. Issue with JS frameworks is that many find them complex, i.e. complexity has not been abstracted away (which should be goal of abstractions). Maybe DOM manipulation has, but many new complex ideas had to be introduced to achieve it.

Is it mainly the reactivity part of Vue that you benefit from, or are there other aspects which are important?