It usually helps when you view every dependency your project has as a liability. With every dependency, you lose some flexibility. Sometimes this lost flexibility doesn't matter and saves you sanity — operating systems are a prime example, no one wants to go back to the DOS days when each game came with a bunch of sound card drivers and a memory manager and all that stuff. But abstracting away something as simple and as universal as the DOM API isn't going to do anyone any good. Also I can't understand what is this "state" that most everyone tries to somehow "manage" these days.