The fun thing watching the new world of Javascript is that overtooling is so built in to everything that nobody even realizes how many tools they're using. You can't even install this thing until you have the standard pile of javascript tooling in place. And it never occurred to them to even mention how to get said pile set up.
Once set up, this still uses all the same stuff. It just removes a few steps to produce the Big Red Button you press to run it all.
But then again, the thing about the overtooling is: I can't find anything in my React stack that is unnecessary or can be removed. And really, all it is is React, Redux and Webpack. I think the complexity of front-end Javascript development is blown a little bit out of proportion.
React could be replaced with Preact or Inferno.
Redux could be replaced with MobX or RxJS.
Webpack could be replaced with JSPM.
No thanks.
Isn't that hot reloading of components which they say is unsupported?
I think this was true six months ago but now there is create-react-app. You might want to try it out - you won't need to whateverify your code, you just need that one tool. Also it works on Windows.
https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react-app
I want to edit some HTML and Javascript, then reload the browser and see my changes.
With create-react-app the browser will know you've made a change, and reload for you ;-)