When I'm thinking about bloated web frameworks and inefficient libraries, I often come back to memories of 64k demos released by groups such as Farbrausch. Here

When I'm thinking about bloated web frameworks and inefficient libraries, I often come back to memories of 64k demos released by groups such as Farbrausch. Here's what they've pulled off in 2000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3n3c_8Nn2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3n3c_8Nn2Y - as somewhat of a "contrast", jQuery alone (3.0.0-alpha1, minified) weighs 84522 bytes. Use (what you deem as) the right tool for the job. As to how we've got to where we are today, there are lots of reasons - but personally, I feel it's pointless to constantly talk about it. Whether things are more complex than they used to be is up for debate, it's entirely subjective. It's natural for things to evolve given the rising popularity and increased demands - but they evolve organically. People flock to frameworks because there's abstraction, and the "dirty work" has been offloaded to a third-party. This saves people time and effort. It's a bet - frameworks come and go, maintainers disappear; that's just the nature of it.