[kenOfYugen]

Using 'magic' tooling like webpack, or whatever the next overhyped tool will be, doesn't come without a cost. Webpack is heavily opinionated. Last time I used webpack, it wouldn't allow me to use ES6 CoffeeScript or JS code without using babel to downgrade to ES5 spec. I tried to give it a prebuilt project as input to do its magic, and it gave me a message saying that I should use webpack in order to build the script and not feed it directly a prebuilt script for optimal results. It worked fine but that's too opinionated for my taste.

But the point is, you need a build process when building a complex application aimed for production. You should be able to code at least a couple of npm scripts to do what you want, in case you are too bored to code a complete build process yourself.

But truth be told, if you CANNOT code a build process yourself, maybe you shouldn't be writing complex front-end applications in the first place.

You don't need to learn new terminology and configuration styles every time a new hot tool comes around. That's not your purpose, and surely it's not educational or mind expanding.