I don't think there's anything wrong with more complex tooling, as long as the deliverable is simple.... I use a static site generator (11ty in my case, but the

I don't think there's anything wrong with more complex tooling, as long as the deliverable is simple.... I use a static site generator (11ty in my case, but there's hundreds just like it) and, even though my node_modules is 81M, it produces clean html free of unnecessary js or css. Just like a modern digital artist might use photoshop/illustrator to create a static jpeg. Of course, you also have things like gatsby/gridsome which are supposedly also "static site generators" but also ship ridiculous amounts of js to do ridiculous things like "hydrate" the client-side to a full spa.