> Edit: and for the record, xcode is a 13.8GB install
Not to take anything away from your post, but you're comparing a complete IDE & Simulator with dependencies for building a website.
Not to take anything away from your post, but you're comparing a complete IDE & Simulator with dependencies for building a website.
Front-end web dev now consists in large part of building highly interactive applications, not just static sites. That requires tooling. Therefore, it's not unreasonable to expect that the necessary tools will take up space, and there's plenty of prior precedent from other languages.