> "Modern" frontend code requires: Not necessarily, at least in the case of React and Vue. Rather than using NPM, you can self-host react/vue (or preact if yo

> "Modern" frontend code requires: Not necessarily, at least in the case of React and Vue. Rather than using NPM, you can self-host react/vue (or preact if you need something even smaller), or serve it from Unpkg. You don't need node/transpiler/bundlers if you're only targeting modern browsers. You can use modern syntax, async/await, ES6 import and a bunch of other features with static .js files. JSX is a tough one, but there are solutions to that, packages domz and HTM are made to allow using React/Preact without NPM/transpilers. Typescript is also a tough one. But it's also optional, although a good idea to have. I hope optional type annotations land in ES6 soon so typechecking can happen without anything resembling compiler phase. - > To being able to "hydrate" some server-side rendered template? Not good enough reason. The "hydrating" parts is entirely optional in "modern frontend". It also needs some stuff on the server that is IMO significantly more complex than what I described above. But apart from some very specific cases, one don't necessarily need it.