I've been observing this current 'trend cycle' in web development with shock and horror.
Never in history has it been easier to sit down and write plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript! Those are the three core pillars of the web as a platform - and it feels that instead of trying to get as close and familiar as we can with those three technologies, so many people are caught in the endless attempt to abstract away the web part of the web platform and approach it as a software development platform, almost ignoring what makes the web platform unique and powerful.
People use Babel for their JavaScript; SASS, SCSS, Stylus, and PostCSS for their CSS; and Jade/Pug and other HTML shorthands for writing their HTML. They use modules upon modules upon modules, building an intricate web of dependencies. The NPM left-pad fiasco should demonstrate how fragile the ecosystem and workflows people have been using are right now.
At the end of the day, the resulting websites coming out of these workflows are rendered as plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - I wonder how often it's easier just to write that output directly yourself instead of using all the other tools and workflows to conjure up the simple result we want to see at the end. (Once you've been solving the same problems for a while you would end up with a snippet-based workflow instead of a tool-based workflow)
The other danger I see in using too many tools to build websites instead of writing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a more direct way ➸ every tool is an imperfect abstraction of the idea you're working with. For example you can be more expressive in CSS than the code that CSS tools will work with and allow you use. If you use a linter, or other tools to help tidy up your code, they will often be stricter than the full range of expression the language allows. When you use multiple tools together, you become limited to only being able to express the parts of the language that all of the tools have overlapping support! If you use a lot of tools you're giving up a lot of freedom and flexibility, and this often leads to headaches and creating a lot of unnecessary labour for yourself. It's kind of like dividing by zero: as you're limited in expression in your whole project (with all tools) by the least expressive tool you have in your workflow.
Another way to think about it - every layer of abstraction away you are from your final output is like wearing an additional pair of sunglasses. If you wear 3 or 5 pairs of sunglasses pretty soon it will be too dark to anything clearly at all.