> Almost a whole decade ago we had pretty simple and straight forward build patterns for frontend.
a decode ago, we didn't really build web apps like today though. The browser landscape was different. The technology was different.. but the most important: the expectation was different. Man, 10 years ago we still had flash.
> [...] help with productivity for some people but it just seems insanely overly complex to me
It is. To be honest, if I'd start today, I'd be super lost too.. but it is a one-time cost/investment to start to gain that productivity.
I think the biggest upside of this whole thing is working at scale in terms of human. Good modularization allows you to achieve this.. in the old school day, that was either a big javascript bundle, or a bunch of them inserted in the pages as global.
My opinion is: if you think you don't need it, don't bother with it. I didn't understand webpack until I needed it. I didn't understand React until I needed it. I didn't understand docker and kubernetes until I needed it. Trying to force yourself to use thing when you don't see the usefulness is counter productive.