[aaronem]

Well, you do at minimum need something that understands CommonJS modules, if you want to pack isomorphic code to run in the browser, so you need Browserify or Webpack.

And you need a module downloader that resolves and installs dependencies, so you need NPM and/or Bower.

And, if you want to write unit tests (which you should!) then you need a Javascript test harness, because otherwise you're going to have a bad time instantiating your modules and injecting mocks into them. You could do this in just plain Node, sure, but you'll end up reinventing a lot of wheels if you do. So you need Mocha, or something very like it.

But build tools are sort of a luxury, sure. You can get by just fine with make, if you already know how to use it. And nobody needs transpilers, except people who just don't have enough problems in their lives already.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

> Well, you do at minimum need something that understands CommonJS modules, if you want to pack isomorphic code to run in the browser, so you need Browserify or Webpack.

No, you don't. These are optional. You only need these for larger applications that need packing.

> And you need a module downloader that resolves and installs dependencies, so you need NPM and/or Bower.

No, you don't. You can manually keep things up to date.

> And, if you want to write unit tests (which you should!) then you need a Javascript test harness, because otherwise you're going to have a bad time instantiating your modules and injecting mocks into them.

Okay, you probably do need this.

[lowboy]

> No, you don't. You can manually keep things up to date.

Sure, but there are better things I could be doing with my time.

[dasil003]

Like debugging broken build tools? Or what about inter-tool incompatibilities? Those are always fun to figure out.

[yoklov]

This does not take as long as you seem to think it does.

[Killswitch]

Your first 2 responses fit into this category:

> people who just don't have enough problems in their lives already.