I agree with most of the points, as needless complexity and especially complexity to "add simplicity" (as this seems to be the justification). I believe it's generally a side effect of backwards compatibility -- we'd rather add customization via complexity rather than breaking something that's fundamentally not working into simpler, saner parts. The former doesn't scale with time. Something has to give eventually.

I'm a little confused at how he praises Angular and React while simultaneously complaining about the addition of complexity in HTML and CSS to support misgivings. That's a good description of what both of those libraries are currently doing.

I can understand looking on component-oriented development or intelligent data binding here as "better" if the entire underlying system is totally replaced by these. Unfortunately you can't get away from the complexity below them even in the simplest of real world applications, nor should you (a fact Angular sort of embraces, except that you shouldn't be modifying the DOM). It exists and is therefore relevant if need to do things in the browser. The ultimate outcome of total DOM abstraction is something like ExtJS which is just fundamentally broken and unusable. Something is broken when the thing that was supposed to make you productive constructs walls for your protection that you must break through or work around just to do basic things.

I'm curious in general about the author's interest in Angular. It's become so much more complex than that little library Miško was showing off way back before it became big. There's so much magic going on these days that it'd be a nontrivial task to master using it.

I got the same feeling while reading this. Even if all of the author's pet peeves were warranted, and many of them seem to be, the rambling, unorganized style of writing makes the points seem less credible.

Maybe it was written that way on purpose, for some kind of effect. Or maybe (I'm guilty of this) it's just a blog, not an essay, and the writer didn't particularly feel like putting in the effort to edit.

But I think it would have been much stronger with some structure to the complains, so that the reader knows what he's getting into when he begins reading, and knows what the overarching point is, without having to piece it together himself.