[easong]

I mean, react (and associated frontend technologies) are just a way of making it easier to write code within the constraints of browsers, which are honestly a small miracle. Yes, they're a pile of hacks upon hacks (the web was designed to share physics papers, not deliver complicated multimedia applications), but they let you write the same code for every major operating system, device, and form factor that exists and deploy it seamlessly over an unreliable network. It's shocking that everything works as well as it does.

And as programmers, everything we use is just papering over the horror of writing network-connected cat-sharing apps on weird-shaped bits of metal - why worry about a light abstraction over the JS build step?

My experience with Atom has also been sub-par, but Visual Studio Code is pretty cool and built on the exact same platform (electron).

I think you're the exact target audience for typescript, for what it's worth. It will give you type checking, IDE integration, compiler errors, modules, etc basically for free and is (not exclusively, and IMHO) built for people who find javascript distasteful.