[webmaven]

> The culture stopped being about making usable and accessible interfaces for people, and more about "component architecture", "server-side rendering", "tree shaking", that solve problems created by the very tools they are using.

Speaking as a confirmed cynic, that seems overly cynical. ;-)

The problems being solved by the web framework hamster wheel are those of rising bars for usability and speed, with measurable in $$$ effects (ie. an extra 1s delay could increase shopping-cart abandonment rate by 1.5%). Which matters a lot more at web-scale.

So, these trendy frameworks are solving problems that most developers shouldn't worry about (it is premature optimization) but that matter a great deal to the companies that release them (Google: Angular and Polymer; Facebook: React and Flux; etc.). OTOH, it is tempting to tap into of all the engineering effort that goes into libraries like these. You just have to know where to stop before sinking into the HammerFactoryFactory mire. ;-)