Spot on. It’s a shame the front-end world has become such a bloated mess. So much of what’s needed for the front-end is now written for the back-end; then requires webpacks, etc. just to get them to work in the browser. It’s ridiculous, and keeps so many people away from learning front-end development, which is a critical skill for building real-world applications that actually matter.

The front-end is the touchpoint to the entire solution. It informs how to craft proper back-ends, since their purpose is to ultimately enable the user experience.

Using today’s bloated JS frameworks is cumbersome. They are over-engineered and demand one to learn things that have nothing to do with proper front-end development. You can do EVERYTHING using vanilla JS and, if needed, jQuery. There is no reason every developer shouldn’t grab a few simple CDNs at the top of their index file and start building a UI, immediately. The ability to rapidly craft an interface to one’s solution is a superpower in the real world, as it communicates directly with end users, who get to touch and feel what is being built.

This is true for ALL types of software and ALL parts of the architecture. Everyone should know how to craft UIs. But these bloated, over-engineered frameworks prevent people from learning proper JavaScript. I see Angular and React developers severely lacking front-end skills, because they don’t have the flexibility to maneuver through problems, and that’s because their vanilla JS (required for flexibility) is so lacking. All they’ve learned is the “ecosystem” and how to hookup components. This isn’t development, and it makes today’s practitioners completely dependent on what’s already been solved; a very limited “skill” for someone who calls themselves a developer.

These frameworks get built and promoted by large companies because it standardizes their staff. This isn’t what’s good for the community at large.

Let people build. It’s time to promote plain HTML/CSS/JS, with a few additional, lightweight libraries that require nothing more than a CDN in the header. It’s simply unbeatable.