Modern Javascript in the Java-only Enterprise

If you are one of those developers that is attempting to get Javascript treated as a first class citizen in the Enterprise, you are not alone. Many of us are fighting the good fight every day but still have to deploy our web applications in a WAR, because "that's how web applications are deployed here." This doesn't mean that you have to forget about using modern tools like Webpack, Typescript, Less, Jest, and React. I'd like to share my experiences using modern Javascript tooling with Spring Boot applications in an enterprise that exclusively uses Gradle to build WARs or deployable JARs in Jenkins for web application development. It's not quite as bad as you would think. You may even think it's kinda neat.