For as long as I can remember, I've strongly felt you don't need a JS framework; you're better off learning JavaScript and gaining a better understanding of the language.

This is, like the author says, factually true, but a conversation I recently had gave me a different perspective on the matter.

The real problem a framework solves is communication.

You can build your own state machine, router, dom abstraction and whatever else we use these days, but we would require huge ramp-up time to get productive in every new codebase.