Bluntly, I don't agree, at least as much as "useful" means "improves developer efficiency or software quality". I think you can argue it was useful at one time

Bluntly, I don't agree, at least as much as "useful" means "improves developer efficiency or software quality". I think you can argue it was useful at one time - which I'd still probably argue against, there's always been unbundled alternatives with lots of advantages, but it'd be a much stronger case - but by 2021, that ship was definitely sunk. Babel is here today because of CRA, and CRA is, has always been, a horrible idea possible only because nobody gave a shit about anything other than wall-clock-time-to-series-A for over a decade.