Javascript is very easy to work with if you just stick to micro packages. What slows it down is that the language has been forked to an incompatible spec (ES6) so there is essentially a hard fork in pool of libraries. To deal with this—and calm anxieties around lack of inheritance, trauma over having to type function over and over, etc—layers of pre-processing have been added: JSX, SASS, asset compilation, compatibility layers, framework booting. This pipeline distances developers from the DOM and other low-level protocols, increases the surface area of the build process, and frequently disables debugging and introspection tools. In addition megaframeworks like Angular, Ember, and React add mandatory layers of indirection and runtime dependencies between each snippet of code, introducing behavioral complexity and confusion from non-deterministic builds.

All of this is why people are excited about Yarn, but to me it's a band-aid on several architectural mistakes.

Just say no to frameworks. Just say no to ES6 and transcompilation. Just say no to asset pipelines. Viva la JavaScript. Viva la Netscape. Viva la Node.