The person I was responding to wrote "Modern front end development with TypeScript, Vite, Preact, and even the much maligned npm are so much better than anything that preceded them for building complex front end applications." which implies that modern front end is an improvement over what previously existed.

That person then wrote "But for anything real, hell yes, give me a good build mechanism." which implies that he creates real, high quality applications.

But my experience is that all front end web applications are all sub-par, so it doesn't really matter if a SPA uses a bundler or not, it doesn't affect quality when it is all shit anyway. So more power to the guy who decides to not use the bundler.

In the end, I agree with Alan Kay, the web was created by a bunch of amateurs