I'm going to be honest with you. I think you're biased. Frontend development is complex. Not only because of the technologies involved but also because of what'

I'm going to be honest with you. I think you're biased. Frontend development is complex. Not only because of the technologies involved but also because of what's possible these days in the browser (local storage, web sockets, web components, etc.). Server side rendering with PHP or .NET will only get you so far. Which btw. is also totally possible with React and Angular. That being said you're right in that the setup of frontend development can feel like overkill for smaller scoped projects. Unfortunately there seems to be barely any middleground. Personally I find e.g. TypeScript and Angular to be a delight in contrast to what was hacked together with Vanilla JavaScript back in the day.