Now it takes four engineers, three frameworks, and a CI/CD pipeline just to change a heading. It’s inordinately complex to simply publish a webpage.

Huh? I mean I get that compiling a webpage that includes JS may appear more complex than uploading some unchanged HTML/CSS files, but I’d still argue you should use a build system because what you want to write and what is best delivered to browsers is usually 2 different things.

Said build systems easily make room for JS compilation in the same way you can compile SASS to CSS and say PUG or nunjucks to HTML. You’re serving 2 separate concerns if you at all care about BOTH optimisation and devx.

Serious old grump or out of the loop vibes in this article.