Article argues build tools are unnecessary prostheses

The author argues that modern web development tooling relies heavily on unnecessary build steps like type compilers, obfuscation, bundlers, and server-side runtimes that duplicate capabilities now natively supported by modern browsers and servers. While these tools solve specific challenges in large codebases, they often impose hidden costs on performance, battery life, and complexity. The article concludes that many of these build-time prostheses are no longer needed because the underlying platform has evolved. Open article →