> Compare this to one of our devs spending over a week and hundreds of lines of config with webpack and still couldn't achieve an identical config. The de facto tools like webpack, gulp, grunt, etc. are unnecessary complexity monsters.
> That's what people are complaining about here and they have a right to. It's not the idea that's flawed, it's the ridiculously over complex, constantly breaking implementations like the ones above and most similar tools.
Well, the complexity is because webpack/gulp/grunt are do-everything tools.
There are lots of features to assist everyone, and usually if you have some obscure requirements, webpack has an solution.
Yeah, webpack is complex - IMO one shouldn't use webpack just to bundle up JS files. There are opinionated tools like Parcel or CRA(which automatically configures webpack under-the-hood), and those will fit 90% of the users. Only the left 10% which existing opinionated solutions cannot accommodate can fiddle with the webpack config directly.
> Not too mention the low quality of such tools and npm itself requiring one to now be an expert on not only the build chain, but npm and yarn before even starting any project.
Well, do you really think JS has low-quality tools? I really don't see them as low-quality... And you should know npm/yarn before starting a JS project; it's like knowing gcc/clang before starting a C project, or knowing cargo before starting a Rust project.
> The complaints are more than valid when there are tools that do the same job without the unnecessary complexity.
(Assuming you're talking about npm/yarn) If you can do the same job without all the dependencies, you don't have to know package managers. If you want to, you should know the package managers.