As a hiring manager, I’m always interested in seeing a candidate’s exercise of their skills. But “from absolute scratch” is not something we really do in the working world if we can possibly avoid it, so I wouldn’t expect it in your portfolio. If you’ve got some amazing JS or CSS to show off, definitely do so, but point it out because I’m otherwise expecting frameworks.

Ethically there are no problems with libraries and frameworks. If you’re using them consistently with the creators’ licenses, we’ll, that’s what those things exist for.

And why exactly should I or anyone else confine our research to what these monopolies want?

I doubt the energy savings would cover the cost difference in my case, and even if it did it’s worth a little extra to never run out of hot water.

I’ll stick with the tankless.

When it’s on. When you aren’t using it, it draws zero. I’ve had a tankless electric for 8 years, and my power usage hasn’t changed much either up or down.

This. Anything with a million users is chock full of megacorps. The noteworthy bit is that this isn’t run exclusively by one of them.