Hello world in JS doesn't require WebPack in any environment. This JS file will run just fine in both the browser, node, deno, whatever:

    console.log("Hello, World")

There's absolutely nothing to stop you or anyone else from writing a JS file, importing it into an HTML file, and hosting both on GitHub pages. With ES modules you can now split your code into different files that import each other, and it all just works. No build step, no webpack, just JS files behind a server of some kind.

Meanwhile, if you're interested in using someone else's code, the CDNs are all still there. Vue, JQuery, lodash, and many other libraries are available for import directly into your HTML file.

A lot of people in this thread are conflating "all the tutorials tell beginners to do things the hard way" with "JavaScript is now a harder language to get started with than it once was".