That's some nice, much needed article! Thanks for your time to write it up.
I believe in re-using code, and thus, less LoC. In fact, for the same autocomplete solution, year ago, I took some plugin, stripped all unwanted stuff and made it much better and faster, also to suit my needs. But again, starting from scratch would have set me back by another couple of weeks and going by that route, I actually saved those 2 weeks.
But as a matter of fact, while stripping down the code, I get to learn a lot of new ways to use Vanilla JS and that was a big deal, and that opened up my eyes. Now, whenever I stuck with little hurdles, I try to solve them myself before I start looking for 2rd party plugins. And this for me, is great!