And 3 months from now in 2017 those 2 commands will be deprecated because no one uses those programs anymore.
Hide all that complexity in a `./build.sh` or `make` and hand them a config and a README. The author of the article is a web designer with a slightly technical problem to solve. He didn't even need to know about gulp, or grunt, or webpack or babel. Those tools are (should be) as relevant to his domain as the tools used to manufacture the circuits that run them.
"Just use this magic build.sh!" sounds a lot like "Just use this magic starter kit!" or "Just use yeoman!"
Who is supposed to write this 'build.sh' in this scenario of yours?
Without fail, every single magic build system or magic starter project I have ever used is now deprecated and abandoned.
Makefiles? No one uses those anymore, use Grunt!
Grunt? No one uses that anymore, use Gulp!
Gulp? No one uses that anymore, use webpack!
Meanwhile, I can pick up a python project I worked on 10 years ago, or a go project I started 4 years ago and everything works exactly the same.
The worst thing is, every single thing these frameworks are trying to address are solved problems, and have been for decades. But people love reinventing wheels.
All you need to "JavaScript in 2016" (as a beginner) is a config file and one or two commands. That's it. If that's too information or too hipstery for your taste, then follow the footsteps of other programming languages and use an IDE with a button that can hide that complexity for you.