You neglect the pointy-haired boss factor.
The tendency to pine for an ever-heavier minified, transpiled, inscrutable javascript blob, megabytes in size, also comes from bosses impressed by anyone displaying an aura of arrogance.
“Oh yeah? Well, I’mmm using [sparkle thingie] and it’s just sooo much better.”
That mode of thinking also comes from the top.
I once watched this turd of a middle manager lean on his underling, while sporting the biggest boss boner about basically nothing at all.
The mandate was that it's time to transpile everything under a new framework. One framework to rule them all.
So they get to this place where all the global variables are fucked, and it's a mess.
Just put everything
in namespaces, we NEED
to move forward.
Then, blah blah blah components, blah blah blah modules, blah blah blah Bruce and Harriet Nyborg. Totally clueless to the idea that he might sound like a total fucking sham.
It's just hot air. None of it's real. There's blood in the water only in the sense that when the annual reviews come around, woah! Look out! 1% raise coming through! Finally. Minted as assistant manager at burger king.
It's just puffy egos in the king's court. No one is solving real problems. It's all boondoggles and exercise bikes at another bullshit job.
Here. Plug this wad of ad tech into this garbage news article template. Gotta be able to say it's "newer" and "better" too. Moths to a flame.
Pointy-haired boss perks up at all the talk of pointy, shiny objects.
Well, I think it should
fluff my scrotum too, what
do you think?
I concur.
Now the ad tech gets bundled with a boss scrotum fluffer.
Sprints go by. And nothing is getting done. Floundering, aimlessly adrift in high seas. The JS blob just gets bigger and dumber, but we march on. It must transpile. We have to be able to say we're hip. That we're "with it" or everyone will laugh at us.
The old way is disgusting. And under a new boss it stinks of "not invented here" syndrome. The old boss owned it, so it must be terrible.
Underlings scuttle like cockroaches at footsteps, terrified of boss and middle manager. Truly fucking dickless assholes. Spineless, and without souls. Non-player characters.
The demands are put forward. Begging is silenced. People are fired. Heads roll. It must transpile. We need to be able to say that we "do that" or people will think we're dinosaurs. (even though we are)
It's kind of a joke to witness a death march in a technical role. Mostly because, if the team is such a push over, to even entertain what is obviously a death march, they probably aren't smart enough to do their job.
So, when you see cargo cult JS floating around, it's fair to estimate it as a product of clucking trendy drones, and wimps getting trampled by boss thundercock.