I guess that depends on what an 'app' is. Can I knock up a site with some PHP/HTML/CSS without references - sure. Can I knock up a standard server side app -

I guess that depends on what an 'app' is. Can I knock up a site with some PHP/HTML/CSS without references - sure. Can I knock up a standard server side app - sure, but I'm gonna want to look up certain functions and what arguments they take. Can I put together an SPA without? Probably not. I know what I need to do, but I'm not going to remember which packages I need to install, or how they are configured, or if package x works with webpack4 or if I have to have Vue2 because a certain thing I want to use doesn't support 3 yet etc. There are so many moving parts now for an 'app' that it is not feasible to keep it all in your head. Thats why there are so many starter-packages for things, because people forget what they did the first time around, so just create a new git repo with the skeleton to get going again ... only to be replaced in 6 months. It was perl and flat file site counters when I started, and now I have to google how to make webpack work nicely :D