We have mostly used the same tools for years. People feel that React or Webpack are the new hype tools for cool kids, but React is there since 2013 and Webpack since 2012. A lot of companies still use Angular 1 (released in 2010, almost 7 years ago).
I often read complaints about how fast the libraries/frameworks/tools are replaced with other ones in the front-end world.
For example in a recent Hacker News discussion:
the bigger issue [of the JS libraries] is the speed at which each one is replaced. [...] the absurd rate at which the JS community seems to adopt and deprecate libraries and frameworks and whatever else they're calling them today.
Or:
My main problem is the speed, and bad backwards compatability. Generally speaking if I take a 2 year old C,C++ or Java project, I can be sure I can update to recent libraries and everything will just work with minimal fixes. In Javascript it seems every time I pick a project up from a couple of years ago, every library version I was using is past end-of-life, and updating requires a major rewrite.
This feeling is quite interesting because the front-end world is not changing so fast. It's even pretty stable.
If we look at the release dates of the main libraries/frameworks/tools used massively nowadays:
Libraries
- jQuery : 2006
- Lodash : 2012
Frameworks
- Backbone : 2010
- Angular 1 : 2010 (Angular 2 : 2016)
- Ember : 2011
- React : 2013
Builders
- Grunt : 2012
- Webpack : 2012
Transpilers
- TypeScript : 2012
- Babel : 2014
Analysis tools
- JSHint : 2010
- ESLint : 2013