[AndrewNCarr]

>The difficulty is that anything more complex is TOO complex as an example.

This sums it up. "Todo" examples are intended as a web/js-framework equivalent to the traditional "Hello World" example used to introduce a programming language. "Todo" defines a basic unit of usefulness that can be easily implemented to give the target audience an idea of what a given framework "looks like". It isn't perfect, but it is a starting point for framework comparison.