[robmclarty]

Exactly. If you don't want to burden your little head with OPAs and APIs and application architectures, just stick the jQuery and happily manipulate the DOM here and there as you see fit. If you want to make something bigger, something more app-like (in your browser), something that's not merely a web page, you're going to need some structure like that found in an MVC framework.

Coming off working on a large Backbone app, I've seen how bloated, needlessly repeated, and painstakingly verbose things can get. Angular solves a lot of the problems I have with Backbone by taking care of basic plumbing for me so I can focus on the unique parts of my app. It's magical, but that's what I want in a framework: less pounding out boilerplate and more writing application code.