From Erich Reich at qmo.io, talking about our propensity to include too many libraries when starting up a JavaScript project:
Do you have any dates in your project? Why not throw in MomentJs? Do you deal with arrays? Throw in something like lodash or Ramda. What are you dumb? Use a linter for gawdsake! While you're at it, throw a few githooks in. I honestly don't know how you get out of bed in the morning if you aren't using Babel and Axios and a good CSS framework and all that other stuff you flat headed goof. Make sure to compile your transpiled isomorphic app. Even if it's just your Hello World app. Don't embarrass yourself. Perfection or nothing.
Ok, I've got that out of my system... I'm good now. But seriously, there are way too many devs who get caught up with doing everything all the time. Just because the herd is going one way, that shouldn't make it a foregone conclusion.
Flashbacks to the 15,683 files create-react-app creates...
This is why I'm writing that quick series on Templating without Transpilation with VueJS. I'm not saying it's The Right Way to create a client-side stack, but it's a thought experiment worth thinking through -- like Reich's, above, or even Dan Abramov's famous-ish "You Might Not Need Redux.