Sadly, I had the same thought. By the time you + your team get on that latest greatest, it's now been usurped. I really hope that the JS communities can come together for some common needs and have just a couple of "paved road" solutions. I can only imagine how confusing the current state of affairs is for someone who "[just] wants to get started building modern JavaScript apps"
I think a good mindset for building modern javascript apps is that they are full featured desktop / mobile apps, just like a windows / mac / ios / android native app. By definition these types of apps are complex, and always have been, but they are highly valuable!
Looking at it from the lens of "web apps are just some html and css with a little jquery" is a mindset that can make building very ambitious web applications seem disproportionately difficult.
