op here: Yes I do defend the tools because the alternative the article I responded to apparently was not to use any tools. Obviously this is an option, and for

op here: Yes I do defend the tools because the alternative the article I responded to apparently was not to use any tools. Obviously this is an option, and for some cases it's hands-down the best one, but simply complaining about the complexity isn't a solution either. The tools fix major problems with JS development which the authors of the tools had no hand in making or power to fix. Many people complain about grunt/gulp/webpack but they don't want to use Makefiles. Many people complain about how icky JavaScript is and can't wait until ES6 and Babel already gives that to you today. There are thousands of well written packages you can use to avoid reinventing the wheel which you need to include as yet another file on a CDN which could end up being a security vuln. or at the very least slower in HTTP 1.x. Same issue when people complain about npm or left-pad. They have perfectly valid complaints though, but the experience and productivity then and now are completely different. And when you get past setting up the tooling it's light years better. One hopes this only gets better and simpler over time, but for now it's not.