The impression I got from working on various projects over the past couple of years was that if the build doesn't include Babel/Webpack/Packet/etc then you're not doing a 'professional' job.

> ... handwritten javascript is not that rare nowadays, is it?

I love handwriting vanilla javascript, though I only really get the opportunity to do it in my personal projects.

When I made the decision earlier this year to rewrite my canvas library from scratch, I made a deliberate choice to drop support for IE/Edge/legacy browsers. (I can do this because nobody, as far as I know, uses my library for production sites). Being able to use ES6+ features in the code - promises, fat arrows, const/let, etc - has been a liberation and a joy and made me fall in love with Javascript all over again. Especially as the library has zero dependencies so when I'm working on it, it really does feel like working in uncharted territory where reinventing a wheel means getting to reinvent it better than before.

I wish paid work could be such fun.