“What’s wrong with build tools? Other languages are compiled!”

Yes, but their compiler is official and ubiquitous.

The #JS ecosystem has devolved into a state where abstraction, the most fundamental software engineering concept, has been outsourced to third party tooling.

Using a package, even with dependencies, should be mindless, not a task requiring research and balancing of tradeoffs.

"Dependency-free" is not a badge of honor in healthy ecosystems.

*That’s* the problem. Not compiling.