Eh I really strongly disagree with this common criticism -- "huge overcomplex etc etc". Basically if you use a tool suite properly designed for your development

Eh I really strongly disagree with this common criticism -- "huge overcomplex etc etc". Basically if you use a tool suite properly designed for your development area, you basically need to know how to setup your project/IDE integration with server runtimes etc. (sometimes not easy to do if you don't know how but once you do it's 15 minutes, once per project... consult a senior dev for first 1 or 2 project creations). Then you can usually plug in external systems that obscure mounds & mounds of complexity (CMS, persistence, etc.) just by making a few minimal calls to their APIs. Then extra features (caching, asset compilation) are a bonus -- the project is so rock solid to begin with that often you don't need to optimize every aspect of the code. EDIT: I've also found this to be why corporate devs are not miserable. The tools are so reliable that the companies don't mind paying devs to use this targeted, minimal approach. And for the devs it means they can try their hand at pet projects with novel code without worrying about ever getting caught in a bad timecrunch. Corps with standard needs don't seem to require overtime work to keep the wheels spinning.