> I just don't see how we can do without software build tools. They are so common in almost every language/platform I've used.
All depends on your use case. Honestly if you're working on a web app you actually don't need any build tools if you really didn't want to.
But ultimately I wasn't advocating for zero build tools. The way JavaScript works you can write your own scripts (I wrote my own, barely one page of code for minifying, packing, versioning, testing, etc) or use any of the systems if you want to. It's all not that hard. But I don't think only one (or small handful) of people should know how to use them and I think we can vastly simplify what some of them do today (looking at you, babel and webpack).
I agree with you that writing build scripts and using build tools both are not very hard. Who finds them hard? I'm sure Babel and webpack could be improved. What would you propose for how to improve them? Thanks.
All depends on your use case. Honestly if you're working on a web app you actually don't need any build tools if you really didn't want to.
But ultimately I wasn't advocating for zero build tools. The way JavaScript works you can write your own scripts (I wrote my own, barely one page of code for minifying, packing, versioning, testing, etc) or use any of the systems if you want to. It's all not that hard. But I don't think only one (or small handful) of people should know how to use them and I think we can vastly simplify what some of them do today (looking at you, babel and webpack).