While it is a cycle, it isn’t necessarily a bad cycle. With this cycle there is constant innovation to meet changing needs; there is always some new product addressing the shortcomings of the incumbent competitor.
Where people stopp trying to make “pluggable systems” and “platforms” and instead tried to actually solve problems with finality, and to create procedural interfaces that cover a clear cone of responsibility, the result is mature libraries that stop changing, and become bedrock under applications.
I won’t say it’s “bad” not to strive for that. It is a unique challenge you may or may not wish to tackle.
What you’re describing is different:
“Abstractions” are by definition unnecessary, they are imaginary things which imperfectly model of some real things underneath. They are contrasted with control systems, which strive to manipulate those things without any metaphor.
“Cruft” is items which you don’t need that are bundled with items you do need. It is contrasted with tools that are easy to just not use at all.
I don’t know what anachronism means in this context.
I’m not saying it’s easy to make tools that are neither abstract, nor bundled with unrelated things. Just that it is a place you can aim for.
I disagree with your notion that abstractions and cruft are inevitable. They’re not inevitable, they are encouraged in the present development climate.
After Web Bundlers are natively supported, bundlers can honestly focus on the build-pipeline problem area they naturally evolve into.
I also don’t think “build pipelines” are part of the solution.
But I do support you pursuing your vision of finality. Mine is pretty different, you can look up “browser bridge” on NPM if you are interested.
I'm not sure how you can about finding fundamental enduring solutions to platform gaps that user-space tools solve without adding platform features. That's always going to create a period where some browsers support a feature and some don't, and we've _always_ had to deal with that. It won't be different here.
I mention build pipelines because that's what most bundlers actually are. If they drop the bundling part, they can just focus on that.
Which means: lovely for you, until something snaps.
For me that’s two cons: lost users, and a more complex data model. And no pros.