It sounds like you're slowly moving to the viewpoint I adopted a little over a decade ago. That all these frameworks and abstractions do not deliver on their promises.
With me, it reached the point where I am no 100% against front end frameworks, and a lot of the tools like LESS/SASS/SCSS because to be brutally frank, EVERY claim of "benefits" to their use is a bald faced LIE!
They add more to learn, more steps to the development process, quite often piss on the separation of concerns and reason HTML and CSS even exist from so on-high you'd think the almighty just got back from a kegger, and are nothing more than predatory scams. When you get to CSS frameworks like bootcrap or failwind, it gets many times worse as they slop presentational classes at everything defeating most of the reason CSS even exists, dragging things back to the worst of mid '90's markup practices. Same goes for idiotic code-bloat like BEM.
I should like BEM, any time someone comes up with a consistent naming convention I'm all in... but dumping classes into the markup destroying caching advantages, doubling or more the code size... much like the trashy ARIA roles the only time I could see the advantage is if you're ignoring semantics and using the wrong markup. Solution? Rather than sleazing all the extra classes or roles at things, just use the right markup!
Same for the pre-processor nonsense. I can see how people who think that a homepage of 4k of plaintext and a half dozen content images needs 100k of markup, 500k of CSS in 6 files, and two megabytes of scripting in dozens of files MIGHT think that LESS/SASS/SCSS and equally rubbish server-side junk like REACT or VUE serves a purpose.
But for those of us who would use 10k of HTML, 48k of CSS for the entire site, and probably have little to no client side scripting such "tools" are monuments to ignorance, incompetence, and ineptitude. The only thing about them that could be called professional grade tools are the people promoting their use!
That might sound harsh, but as an accessibility and efficiency consultant, these frameworks, tools, and so forth have spent a decade on my hit list for the problems they create and lack of real-world benefits. They CLAIM to be easier, simpler, or better, but that in now way, shape, or form lines up with the reality of just writing semantic markup, vanilla style and CSS, maintaining separation of concerns, and using semi-fluid elastic design.
All these tools have to offer developers are shiny beads and shallow flattery. The moment you actually understand HTML, why CSS is separate from it, and embrace the idea that scripting only functionality is garbage, you will immediately see through the facade these frameworks try and hide behind.
Sadly, far too many people making websites aren't qualified to write a single blasted line of HTML. Lands sake, most folks can't even use h1..h6 properly. That lack of understanding is why people sleaze presentational classes at everything recreating the worst of HTML 3.2, slop static style in the markup or link to stylesheets without media="" or worse declaring media="all"... etc, etc...
Hell, just view source anything built with bootcrap or failwind -- even their own examples. Look for the LINK tags... do you see media="screen" in there? NO YOU DO NOT! Proof positive the clowns who CREATED these frameworks are unqualified to write a single line of HTML/CSS, much less have the unmitigated gall to tell others how to do so!
It's all -- pre-processors, client-side frameworks, etc -- a bunch of garbage that preys on those who scream "wah wah, eye dunz wunna lurn HTML and CSS" because of course learning all the rest of this stuff is so much "easier". BULLCOOKIES!
Any and all claims of this chazerei being easier, simpler, or better is nothing more than ignorant fools parroting propaganda. It is in no way, shape, or form based in reality.
In the defense of framework writers a los of these CSS frameworks appeared at a time when there were vast browser incompatibilities. Today browsers have standardized a lot but a decade or so ago they were vastly incompatible in key areas.
So for example jQuery didn't only make it a bit shorter to write, it also saved you to some degree of having to worry so much about IE incompatibilities. The same goes for some of the other frameworks of it's time.
And Typescript is more about bringing static typing to the browser.
But I definitely agree that too many decisions are being made out of fashion choice rather than true technical merit. And there seems to be a compulsive need to follow the "new best thing" all the time. It seems unhealthy for the industry to me.
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It sounds like you're slowly moving to the viewpoint I adopted a little over a decade ago. That all these frameworks and abstractions do not deliver on their promises.
With me, it reached the point where I am no 100% against front end frameworks, and a lot of the tools like LESS/SASS/SCSS because to be brutally frank, EVERY claim of "benefits" to their use is a bald faced LIE!
They add more to learn, more steps to the development process, quite often piss on the separation of concerns and reason HTML and CSS even exist from so on-high you'd think the almighty just got back from a kegger, and are nothing more than predatory scams. When you get to CSS frameworks like bootcrap or failwind, it gets many times worse as they slop presentational classes at everything defeating most of the reason CSS even exists, dragging things back to the worst of mid '90's markup practices. Same goes for idiotic code-bloat like BEM.
I should like BEM, any time someone comes up with a consistent naming convention I'm all in... but dumping classes into the markup destroying caching advantages, doubling or more the code size... much like the trashy ARIA roles the only time I could see the advantage is if you're ignoring semantics and using the wrong markup. Solution? Rather than sleazing all the extra classes or roles at things, just use the right markup!
Same for the pre-processor nonsense. I can see how people who think that a homepage of 4k of plaintext and a half dozen content images needs 100k of markup, 500k of CSS in 6 files, and two megabytes of scripting in dozens of files MIGHT think that LESS/SASS/SCSS and equally rubbish server-side junk like REACT or VUE serves a purpose.
But for those of us who would use 10k of HTML, 48k of CSS for the entire site, and probably have little to no client side scripting such "tools" are monuments to ignorance, incompetence, and ineptitude. The only thing about them that could be called professional grade tools are the people promoting their use!
That might sound harsh, but as an accessibility and efficiency consultant, these frameworks, tools, and so forth have spent a decade on my hit list for the problems they create and lack of real-world benefits. They CLAIM to be easier, simpler, or better, but that in now way, shape, or form lines up with the reality of just writing semantic markup, vanilla style and CSS, maintaining separation of concerns, and using semi-fluid elastic design.
All these tools have to offer developers are shiny beads and shallow flattery. The moment you actually understand HTML, why CSS is separate from it, and embrace the idea that scripting only functionality is garbage, you will immediately see through the facade these frameworks try and hide behind.
Sadly, far too many people making websites aren't qualified to write a single blasted line of HTML. Lands sake, most folks can't even use h1..h6 properly. That lack of understanding is why people sleaze presentational classes at everything recreating the worst of HTML 3.2, slop static style in the markup or link to stylesheets without media="" or worse declaring media="all"... etc, etc...
Hell, just view source anything built with bootcrap or failwind -- even their own examples. Look for the LINK tags... do you see media="screen" in there? NO YOU DO NOT! Proof positive the clowns who CREATED these frameworks are unqualified to write a single line of HTML/CSS, much less have the unmitigated gall to tell others how to do so!
It's all -- pre-processors, client-side frameworks, etc -- a bunch of garbage that preys on those who scream "wah wah, eye dunz wunna lurn HTML and CSS" because of course learning all the rest of this stuff is so much "easier". BULLCOOKIES!
Any and all claims of this chazerei being easier, simpler, or better is nothing more than ignorant fools parroting propaganda. It is in no way, shape, or form based in reality.
In the defense of framework writers a los of these CSS frameworks appeared at a time when there were vast browser incompatibilities. Today browsers have standardized a lot but a decade or so ago they were vastly incompatible in key areas.
So for example jQuery didn't only make it a bit shorter to write, it also saved you to some degree of having to worry so much about IE incompatibilities. The same goes for some of the other frameworks of it's time.
And Typescript is more about bringing static typing to the browser.
But I definitely agree that too many decisions are being made out of fashion choice rather than true technical merit. And there seems to be a compulsive need to follow the "new best thing" all the time. It seems unhealthy for the industry to me.