Until recently I didn't even know that there was a status quo in the frontend development. I worked with JavaScript in exactly the same way I'd work with any other language where stdlib is minimal at best (like Scheme or C) and that was to design the app, fill as many blanks as possible with libraries and write the rest myself.

Now I'm forced to use Angular and frankly, I'm frightened. There is no room for designing the architecture of my app - it's been taken care of - yet I'm still going to be held responsible for this architecture shortcomings, if I happen to stumble upon some of them.

Of course, codification of some conventions may be convenient and so I'm not against frameworks in general. But I know that sooner or later I will need an escape hatch to do something less than conventional and I want my framework to just get out of my way for a while. That's what Pyramid does and what Django starts to support in recent versions. I'm not yet familiar enough with them, but I suspect Angular, Ember and some others are not that great in this respect.

In short, while I never was very interested in front-end development, I did build some single-page apps, and I - after skimming a few chapters of this book - always worked similarly to what the author proposes. I really do hope that this approach will become dominant (once again, everything old becomes new again and all that), if for no other reason then because I just enjoy designing and writing in this style more.

[PS. It's nice to see you're still alive :)]