I think a lot of it stems from bootcamps and whatnot, focusing on letting people check off a number of boxes by the end of the course/system/whatever. Node - C

I think a lot of it stems from bootcamps and whatnot, focusing on letting people check off a number of boxes by the end of the course/system/whatever. Node - Check React - Check Angular - Check NPM - Check "See how much you've learned in just two weeks! You'll easily get a job with that!" And so on. Rather than learning how some of this stuff actually works, many new developers are falsely led down a path where they think they can't create cool useful stuff without relying on a massive number of libraries and build processes. See the whole leftpad disaster for example (Yes, I know, they fixed it, but it happened to begin with). No seasoned or even moderately experienced developer should be using a package for something as simple as padding something. If I saw leftpad during a code review I'd send it back to the dev to fix. Right now I'm creating a website using pretty basic tools, no frontend builds, and a backend using FPC, Postgresql for DB and done, no mass of libraries, no cascade of dependencies.. Just good performance, simple builds (Single FPC compile to executable), and easy for anyone to wrap their head around the entire process.