As a back-end dev who recently took on creating an SPA for work, I ended up learning and using React/Redux/Babel/Webpack. I pretty much hated every min of it,

As a back-end dev who recently took on creating an SPA for work, I ended up learning and using React/Redux/Babel/Webpack. I pretty much hated every min of it, and there's a fair chance things will break if I update any of the deps, but I can't imagine getting something as organized and functional as I did with just jQuery, or even Knockout. I have code broken up into organized modules (was never a fan of AMD/require.js), and truly re-usable components. The hot reloader renders my changes more often than not without a refresh. Production code is combined and minified into a single .js (no more downloading 15 different .js files). The feedback I have received from the business consistently mentions how fast and responsive the UI is. Yes, the front-end JS scene kinda sucks, but I don't think I could go back to what it was 10 years ago and accomplish what I was able to in the course of a few months.