[gotchange]

> I’ve found Gulp and Grunt to be unnecessary abstractions. npm scripts are plenty powerful and often easier to live with.

The main problem with this line of reasoning is that as things get more complex and expansive over time (and they will do as night follows day) on the npm scripts front, the developer would likely resort to build abstractions to hide all the tangled wires and simplify the dev process and then we're back to square one.

Abstractions are necessary evil but they should be built and also managed efficiently and wisely to avoid the common pitfalls and pain points and make the development process easier and less annoying.