I would agree in most cases a more Vanilla development approach is all that is needed. I still stand by my comment above:
( ^ I am not referring to anyone on the forum however, just speaking in general terms 
so relax people )
@jack you bring up a good point concerning bloat elsewhere with images and added resources.
The lack of proper image compression, linting, etc., etc., wastes a tremendous amount of both time and bandwidth for users everyday, when you add it all up over time the calculated spoilage is a shame to all of us. As we could all do better as designers and developers, I am sure it holds true for most all of us.
@rob, just curious, what aspects of the frameworks do you rely upon mostly?