> $ echo '{}' > package.json && npm i --save-dev typescript vite preact

> added 17 packages, and audited 18 packages in 1s

You're off by two orders of magnitude. I get not wanting a lot of transitive dependencies, but you can get a modern toolchain without having a lot of transitive dependencies.

And you can go even smaller if you're fine with a slightly less user friendly (but still modern, and also very fast) build tool that's used at the core of Vite:

> echo '{}' > package.json && npm i --save-dev typescript esbuild preact

> added 4 packages, and audited 5 packages in 2s

Webpack is the real offender and while vite is cool it isn't really a replacement for the decade or so standard, and looks like it requires a semi modern browser.

I'll probably try it out some time for a home project, but for anything serious it's a no go.