[geuis]

What you are saying is that you are a fairly new frontend developer. Of course that list is daunting. I've been doing this stuff for years and there are projects on that list that I haven't even heard of, and one of my projects (Helium) is on the list!

The reason there are so many solutions to problems is that there are lots and lots of problems. The common stuff we all need is put into one library (eg jQuery). Some types if applications need frameworks so we get Backbone, Angular, or Ember. There's a thousand other types of micro issues that are common enough to need small, reusable solutions.

Combine all of that with hundreds of thousands of inherently creative and inventive people and we end up with multiple solutions to the same problems. Eventually we coalesce around a few of the best tools and move on to new problems.

Just pick what you need to get a job done and don't worry about trying to learn everything.

[andrewflnr]

What I need to get the job done? I can't even find a library to do 2-way CSS style binding. I would have thought that was obvious, but it looks like I'll have to do it myself. To get the experience I want I might need to do a bunch of other stuff myself too. 

I understand the forces that produce multiple solutions to problems. Maybe OP was wrong about that being evidence of a deeper problem. But a lot of the problems are deficiencies in the underlying platform. That's the real problem IMO.