bit of revisionist history going on here if they think that those products weren't sleek enough or stylish from the start. It was the functionality that people got used to, but those products were always relatively stylish enough to not be branded a "nerd <x>." For example, a quick google search on the first CNET iPhone review shows it was considered stylish from the start -https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/original-iphone-review/
The headline makes it feel like you're going to go into the dependency struggles of JavaScript tools, which you do, but not until the end of the article after mentioning struggles with database dependencies and operating system dependencies...
Seems like this is more of a rant against tools upgrading themselves and breaking previous dependencies which causes this kind of domino effect of dependency issues when trying to upgrade the initial tool, not the "JavaScript ecosystem"