The problem is--in my experience anyway--that too many people equate complexity with quality. That exists as part of human nature, it seems, and so naturally that has followed into the JavaScript ecosystem.
I've written and maintained several jQuery applications and if I'm being honest, I much prefer it over all the tooling we have today. jQuery isn't perfect because nothing is of course, but with a little discipline I never really had any trouble maintaining a jQuery application. In my opinion, all the tooling we have today does is obfuscates me away from my code and actually makes it harder to maintain.
> The problem is--in my experience anyway--that too many people equate complexity with quality.
I find that a strange attitude. Complex systems are by definition harder to reason about, and therefore guaranteed to contain more bugs given the same amount of mental effort.
Sometimes complexity is unavoidable, but in general I find myself attracted to simpler systems, and consider that a sign of good engineering rather than the other way around.
I've written and maintained several jQuery applications and if I'm being honest, I much prefer it over all the tooling we have today. jQuery isn't perfect because nothing is of course, but with a little discipline I never really had any trouble maintaining a jQuery application. In my opinion, all the tooling we have today does is obfuscates me away from my code and actually makes it harder to maintain.