I think it's still largely prudent to use bundler tools. I think the biggest issue with not going to ESM syntax comes down to static analysis and tree shaking. It's so much better with proper ESM, and will reduce overhead for the browsers. The bundlers definitely paper over various issues. Being able to import non-js resources like styles, json and other references is useful, to say the least. I don't think this will ever be really practical for direct browser use short of some generational compute and network improvements.
That said, we aren't that far off. Many site are spewing several MB of JS on load, and it's relatively well performing even on modest phones these days. At least relative to 90's dialup where the rule on loads was measured close to 15s. Things are absolutely snappy (mostly). I think the biggest hurdle today is shear entropy. React+MUI+Redux is imo pretty great, and getting to something similar in pure JS would take a lot of effort. Not insurmountable, but significant. There's still a new framework of the month nearly every month in the JS space.
Getting movement is hard. It'll take time and persistence.
That said, we aren't that far off. Many site are spewing several MB of JS on load, and it's relatively well performing even on modest phones these days. At least relative to 90's dialup where the rule on loads was measured close to 15s. Things are absolutely snappy (mostly). I think the biggest hurdle today is shear entropy. React+MUI+Redux is imo pretty great, and getting to something similar in pure JS would take a lot of effort. Not insurmountable, but significant. There's still a new framework of the month nearly every month in the JS space.
Getting movement is hard. It'll take time and persistence.