I had the same problem -- after throwing together a few open source front-end libraries, and struggling with each to get webpack, babel, karma, flow, etc. all working seamlessly together, I put together https://github.com/krakenjs/grumbler and now just fork this every time I want to start something new.

Being able to just start writing code without spending forever setting up the perfect environment is hugely liberating. I'd encourage everyone to find good boilerplates for what they want to do (or put together their own if nothing else fits)

in case its helpful to anyone, i was frustrated with this same thing too so i made a webapp to help with the boilerplate search. It also measures the "cognitive load" of a boilerplate to add some sort of cost function.

Here are the two boilerplates mentioned:

https://packagejason.herokuapp.com/krakenjs/grumbler

https://packagejason.herokuapp.com/styfle/react-server-examp...

and you can search others to your fancy.

I could've sworn you guys were joking but you're all serious. This is utter madness!

How much time do we now need to spend trying to choose a boilerplate?

No, now that time is being used to choose a boilerplate comparison webapp.

lol piss taking in its highest form