The No Man's Land of Web Development
I think about the current state of web development experiences as a continuum. On one end we have traditional Rails-era web apps - full page loads, with bits of dynamism haphazardly mixed in. On the other are rich client-side JavaScript apps with their own structure and life cycles, standing alone and/or talking to an HTTP API.
Rails-era web apps have some great tooling and deliver a pretty nice development experience. The shift toward rich client-side web experiences has lead to some great tooling that makes for a 1st-class web development experience.
A no man’s land
Between these two approaches lies a no man’s land. The tooling and techniques are focused largely on either end of the continuum despite the large population of apps living in the middle.