It’s true. The whole ecosystem is a disaster, largely because everyone wants to be cool and run their own little serfdom. No one can be bothered to write any documentation, because that isn’t fun. Why contribute to a freely available shared project that just works when you can write your own mostly-complete version of it and give it some stupid name you made up in the Taco Bell drive-thru last night?

I’ve worked with one front-end framework extensively. Maybe the others are better, but this one is a nightmare. Breaking API changes every month or two. Additional pieces of the ecosystem added post hoc and then forced down the throats of everyone who wants to ever be able to upgrade. A wrapper (and sometimes more than one) around every commonly used JS library, because it’s so much better to install another copy of jQuery than add three lines to import it via AMD. A CLI whose minor version upgrade instructions literally tell you to go through their Git diffs and reproduce their changes. A core dev team that seems more interested in market share and meet-ups than technological vision.

I’ve been doing web development since the late 90’s. I’ve never seen a framework that can be used to create medium-to-large web apps without introducing more problems than it solves. There’s no substitute for understanding the whole stack top-to-bottom. Maybe there will be someday, but not yet. And when you work through hard problems in CSS or the DOM API, at least you’re learning something that’s likely to be useful in a few years, when the industry sees the error of its ways for a seventh time and starts over with a new batch of half-baked ideas.