JS tooling has come a long way in the last couple of years, Vite for example is so much better than everything that came before. Esbuild is incredible and clear

JS tooling has come a long way in the last couple of years, Vite for example is so much better than everything that came before. Esbuild is incredible and clearly the future of all JS build tools. The trouble is that to people who are only just outside JS ecosystem it’s not very accessible. If you are a PHP, Python or Ruby developer who cut your teeth in the era of jQuery or earlier (prototype.js & script.aculo.us!) it can be quite difficult to make the transition. Combining the modern JS environments with platforms like Django, Laravel or Rails often means having to install and setup from scratch a full Node/NPM toolchain in parallel with your backend toolchain. I believe this is some of the reason for such a disconnect between the the “backend” and “frontend” unless you go 100% JS. I think it's pushed a lot of devs who used to think of themselves as "full stack" towards the backend. I’m trying to fix this with Tetra (https://www.tetraframework.com https://www.tetraframework.com) for the Django ecosystem, the plan is to eventually bundle a esbuild/postcss/sass/less toolchain along with built in tools for installing JS dependancies so you can completely live within the Python/Django environment. It will manage all the complexities of JS tooling for you. The vast majority of developers don't want to think about tooling, they just want to build something quickly and get it out there.