Lots of people relate ES2015 to giving us a better javascript, but the core language remains the same; the changes are just additions.
Building a tool chain can be an extreme pain in the ass because everyone is still experimenting, and trying to make the web better. Things like web workers, hot module reloading, and code splitting are relatively new, and don't have mature tools or patterns. Yes it's hard to learn, and yes it takes a lot of time, but once you learn a few tools you can keep using them over and over. I've been using gulp and browserify since 2011, and recently switched to gulp+webpack for code splitting, and HMR, and the switch couldn't have been easier.
Building a tool chain can be an extreme pain in the ass because everyone is still experimenting, and trying to make the web better. Things like web workers, hot module reloading, and code splitting are relatively new, and don't have mature tools or patterns. Yes it's hard to learn, and yes it takes a lot of time, but once you learn a few tools you can keep using them over and over. I've been using gulp and browserify since 2011, and recently switched to gulp+webpack for code splitting, and HMR, and the switch couldn't have been easier.