I am a big fan of Vite. But I have zero clue what those other tools are. I swear to God, I just put my head down to do some work and all the sudden, frontend tooling has evolved. I wonder if there is a push towards a "boring but works" stack.

> But I have zero clue what those other tools are.

The incorporated tools are actually really amazing:

- vitest, an ultra fast test runner. After using a lot of others, including jest and node's built in one, I love vitest.

- oxlint, replaces eslint but is compatible with its file format and ultra fast, since it isn't written JavaScript. I tried biome, but I found oxlint to have more rules and the eslint compatibility was nice.

- oxfmt, replaces prettier and is faster since it isn't written in JavaScript.

- rolldown, replaces rollup and is compatible with it but it is much faster since it isn't written in JavaScript.

The above are my go-tos in new projects anyhow since they are killer good and fast.

the other tools are for testing, bundling, linting and formatting. Previously you would use different tools from very different open source projects for these things, with different configurations, update cycles etc. Now it's all covered by one simple toolchain. Vite+ is basically the "boring but works" stack, while also being more performant and with less configuration required.

It's a linter, a code formatter, a tester, and a bundler. What exists in your "boring" stack that's more boring than that?

I’ve bounced off Vite because I don’t see a big advantage over esbuild. (I also use Deno.) What do you find useful?

This is the latest emerging "boring but works" stack.

That's what I liked from Bun's proposition. A single binary that just works. Hopefully the others take notice.

> Vite, Vitest, Rolldown, tsdown, Oxlint, and Oxfmt

You already use the first, the second you should be using and has existed for years - it's a jest-compatible runner integrated to Vite.

Rolldown is a part of Vite already (since version 8, alongside other implementing tools like lightnincss).

The ox* suite are native replacements for eslint and prettier. The latter has existed for years. Both of them aim to be drop-in compatible soon.

This is a boring stack.

FWIR, prior to the purchase by Vercel (or was it Cloud flare?), Vite+ was going to be a convenient, no fuss, low movement way set up projects that they sold to businesses for funding.

Fear not, engineer! Recently some smart folks invented something called BackRub that’ll soon solve all your problems! Soon you’ll be able to find information in even less than time than it takes you to type a comment and out yourself as clueless!

I'm currently experimenting with a stack combining assistance, ASP.NET Razor Pages, and htmx, specifically to avoid dealing with the complexities of the modern frontend stack.

AI eliminates a lot of the tedium, grinding tasks, while HTML partials and htmx complement each other perfectly.

Not having to manage frontend framework, SSR states is incredibly liberating. Sprinkle in some vanillla js and redraw specific parts of the page as needed... done

A "push" towards a boring stack? That won't happen because the hype cycle trends towards new tools like water down a river. But if you're looking, I can't recommend Rails enough in 2026. Built on web standards, it's quietly pushing the framework forward and is so much less maintenance than modern JS apps.

I guess I'm just an old man pumping my fist and yelling at the clouds at this point, but I think compartmentalizing every possible aspect of development and then making each one of those as complex as possible lead AI in the bureaucratic deterioration of the trade.