Scalable in which way? Horizontal or vertical? NoSQL DBs scale well horizontally, while RDBMS (SQL DBs) are scaled vertically. Horizontal scaling (scaling out) means adding more nodes (machines) on which the data is partitioned. This can practically happen unlimited. Vertical scaling (scaling up) means spreading the load between CPU and RAM on a single server (or a small group of servers), i.e., adding more power. There’s a practical upper limit to this. There is no definite answer to your question. Both techniques involve trade-offs, for example in form of setup, management and maintenance costs, and complexity, availability, etc.

I really feel frameworks hurt programmers more then they help. Nothing a framework does can't be done with pure code. Frameworks are, hopefully, meant to ease development. To me, the biggest game changer is Motorcycle.js, but mostly so because it builds a loop using mostjs streams. I also favor languages such as TypeScript that allows for static type checks, which in turn make applications robust and less prone to errors. Not only does these frameworks, libraries, and tools save developers, but they also hide complexity and ease readability, thus, making it easier to debug and understand.