[gldalmaso]

Not all web developers build complex web apps out of sport, it is demanded of us to deliver that. JS as a runtime language had poor first time support to help us manage that complexity. We are lucky that some well meaning folks decided to offer tools to help us with that, and the ecosystem has been maturing.

Probably the reason you perceive this obsession with build tools is that incrementally each one had the goal to tackle a set of problems and it did, but then new pain points appeared and other tools were developed to help with that.

That being said, we seem to have reached a rather stable period without major raptures in the landscape for a couple of years. Maybe the growing pains are subsiding.