You sound like you haven't really had to do much real-world work in JS or C++. Apart from managing memory, what makes C++ complicated is accounting for the dif

You sound like you haven't really had to do much real-world work in JS or C++. Apart from managing memory, what makes C++ complicated is accounting for the differences between OSes and shared libraries and even different hardware capabilities. But it's perfectly acceptable for many C++ developers to write code that only works on a single OS or to ship massive bundles that include various compatibility layers or specific versions of libraries to escape the hell that is dynamic library loading. Developing rich applications (i.e. the kind of app that serves the same need as a desktop application you need to download and install) is similar, except it's rarely acceptable to say "oh, this web app only works in Safari" while it's often perfectly acceptable to say "oh, this desktop app only works on the latest macOS". Instead of different OSes you have to deal with different browsers. Instead of shared libraries you have to deal with different implementation levels of web standards (which is rarely an "on or off" distinction but in practice often means having to deal with experimental prefixes, different draft stages and subtle differences with no easy way to determine in advance what the browser supports exactly). And you don't get to compile per platform and users will complain if your code bundle is too big or features aren't supported in their browser. "But web sites are simpler" you might argue, but that's not webpack is used for. Or at least the web sites you'd complain aren't using it. A wordpress blog with tens of JavaScript files is the opposite of what you get when using a tool like webpack. Ironically a simple blog with the same user-facing functionality would likely be much smaller and faster if built with webpack (because a lot of the redundancy and size stems from the good old days' "bolt-on" mentality which is still a common practice for web sites). But surprisingly enough that's not what webpack is used for because "everybody knows" it would be overengineering.