In my experience, this approach really shines when you are building an "isomorphic" app. When the same code is expected to run in the browser and on the server,

In my experience, this approach really shines when you are building an "isomorphic" app. When the same code is expected to run in the browser and on the server, having a build tool that knows about both your entire dependency graph and your different build targets is a huge boon. For example, you get hashed filenames (for far-future cache expiration in the browser) for free (no manifests or runtime reconciliation of names to assets necessary).