But would you recommend that approach for a beginner, or is it better to start with a framework so you don't have to think of everything, and evolve your understanding?
Yes I would because it is where the web is heading. I would adopt Dojo + jQuery or backbone + jQuery and a REST layer. I personally use JAX-RS because I do a lot of enterprise apps and Java is entrenched there, but there are REST libs for most major platforms now.