[pier25]

> Really the problem are all the frameworks pushing people to create a build step.

I doubt it.

People moved on from jQuery and/or vanilla because they needed to produce more sophisticated apps. And even in those days of yore, for any non-trivial project you still needed to concatenate and minify your code.

BTW Preact can be used without a build step.

[whstl]

React and Vue can also be used without a build step. Vue shows how to do it in the "Quick Start" at the beginning of the tutorial. React can do it with an ugly syntax and no libraries, or by using Preact creator's htm library, or domz.