It is a shame though that most of the attractive themes are so bloated.
The target audience just doesn't care (or dont even know). Theme authors want to solve as many problems as possible to increase the chances someone buys their theme. It's in their best interest to sell something with everything but the kitchen sink (V5.0 now with kitchen sink!)
Sure. But it's more than that. For example, they take 3 pieces of functionality and make them all emit separate js/css. Often with copy/paste code duplication for common functions. Or pull in some huge 3rd party library to use one tiny piece of it that you could do in vanilla js anyway.
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The target audience just doesn't care (or dont even know). Theme authors want to solve as many problems as possible to increase the chances someone buys their theme. It's in their best interest to sell something with everything but the kitchen sink (V5.0 now with kitchen sink!)
Sure. But it's more than that. For example, they take 3 pieces of functionality and make them all emit separate js/css. Often with copy/paste code duplication for common functions. Or pull in some huge 3rd party library to use one tiny piece of it that you could do in vanilla js anyway.