I fully agree with the author, and I have stayed on vanilla JS for decades now. I like the simplicity, ownership, zero dependecies. I have my own bundler in Spring Boot using Google Closure Compiler, which works autonomously with the javascript assets. No nodejs needed.
Also with the developer disruption of agentic coding AI, the arguments for using vanilla JS is even stronger. Code reviews of code/solutions is much easier. Scoping of code paths for each server-side render templates is easier. The AI does all the boilerplate coding, while keeping it readable and debugable. Implementing design patterns is just common computer science stuff, and the coding agent is pretty good at it.
I also what to mention, as a business owner, and boss of a startup. All developers here work with vanilla javascript. They were first surprised, but today they prefer it by a huge margin because of the simplicity and zero dependency and non existing build steps. The web browser is the framework, you need another abstraction over the web browser.