There used to be a moment, ten years or so ago, when you could go from "I have an idea" to "I have a running web server" in about thirty seconds: // app.js const express = require ( ' express ' ) const app = express () app . get ( ' / ' , ( req , res ) => res . send ( ' hello ' )) app . listen ( 3000 ) Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode node app.js Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode That was the whole thing. One file. One command. You could paste it into a Slack message. You could drop it in a Gist and someone could run it. A tiny webhook receiver, a debug dashboard, an internal tool, a stub API — the entire project lived in a single buffer in your editor. Then frontend frameworks happened, and somewhere along the way we collectively decided that "starting a new project" meant something else entirely. The scaffold tax Today, the canonical first step in starting a new app is no longer writing code.…