I'm doing this as well, mostly. It's surprisingly productive! I don't use jQuery or anything like that either. For DOM manipulation I've got a little utility module that I'll include in projects. I know what every function does and it's mostly just some convenience wrappers around standard APIs, I have maybe 15-20 functions in total and I don't think any one of them is longer than 20 lines (including comments and white space.)
I've written some reasonably complex apps this way, but I'd probably have a hard time selling this approach to fellow devs, most I've worked with are very entrenched in <insert favorite framework here> and not particularly keen on doing things differently. I can understand and appreciate that point of view, and will acquiesce to the will of the team, but in the past year or so I've had the luxury of being the sole dev on most of the projects I've worked on so this is what I've done and it's been wonderful.
F5 is my compiler, it requires no additional configuration beyond what's already in the HTML, and it's super fast. I love it! :o)
I've written some reasonably complex apps this way, but I'd probably have a hard time selling this approach to fellow devs, most I've worked with are very entrenched in <insert favorite framework here> and not particularly keen on doing things differently. I can understand and appreciate that point of view, and will acquiesce to the will of the team, but in the past year or so I've had the luxury of being the sole dev on most of the projects I've worked on so this is what I've done and it's been wonderful.
F5 is my compiler, it requires no additional configuration beyond what's already in the HTML, and it's super fast. I love it! :o)