It's not the frameworks. React and Vue for example have been super stable for almost 10 years, and they don't really need anything other than one or two packag

It's not the frameworks. React and Vue for example have been super stable for almost 10 years, and they don't really need anything other than one or two packages to work. CDN + alternative syntax is enough to make React as boilerplate-free as jQuery. Add another package (htm) if you want the good syntax back. The problem has always been the ancillary stuff: JSX, Vue SFCs, wanting to use "import from" in the browser, IE11 compatibility, testing, linting, converting CSS, removing typescript types. For those things we need tools like Webpack, Babel, ESLint, etc. And those just aren't "as good" as React, Vue, or even Typescript. Some of them break compatibility constantly, need a lot of boilerplate, need pulling several packages to do the most basic things, are the source of frustration for a lot of people and the source of the overkill you mention. IMHO think part of the issue is that a lot of those ancillary projects are optimizing for cases that aren't significant in practice.