[sametmax]

> Vue requires webpack when going for anything beyond a simple hello world experience

Not at all. That's the beauty of it. A lot of projects just drop Vue in a script tag and use no components. There are 1000's of projects out there with such a scale that anything else would be overdoing it.

> BTW - You don't need webpack for React either. It is entirely possible to write React without it.

Technically yes. But realistically no. First, you will find almost zero doc/tutorials on how to do so. All the ecosystem and community assumes webpack, and a top-down component architecture. If you ask on a forum how to do x, people will promptly tell you to use Redux. And the React API is clearly not comfortable anyway without tooling.

It's a bit like saying "well you could perfectly code a Java project without an IDE". Yes you can. But who would do it ?

[dmitriid]

Why do Vue docs tell you to use webpack for “large, serious projects”? https://vuejs-templates.github.io/webpack

[sametmax]

It seems you have weird idea of what is the average size of a web project. "Large" is not common. It's the exception.

And the reason is: projects starts small, and grow. But not all grow to become large.

The wonderful thing with vue: you start small, and IF you reach the stage you need more, you can do so easily.