Webpack isn't really plumbing like a task runner, it's primarily a dependency wrangler. If you have a page template, which declares dependencies on various part

Webpack isn't really plumbing like a task runner, it's primarily a dependency wrangler. If you have a page template, which declares dependencies on various partials, each of which declares dependencies on images and JS modules and CSS partials, then Webpack can grok all those dependencies and do things like bundling the images/JS/CSS needed for this or that subset of pages (along with hot loading, source maps, etc.). Of course, it can also do stuff like minification and transpilation while it does this, so it tends to get compared to grunt/etc. But the magic of webpack isn't the bundling, it's that you can build highly modular pieces of web content and leave webpack to work out what needs bundling.