Agree with lots of your points, but disagree on the use of your boilerplate.

It’s easier to throw stuff out, then to find and fetch it..

Hence the useage of boilerplates (general use is also wrong cause lots of ppl think of it as a must-use-all concept). See also: the idea with some ppl that Bootstrap is a “theme”..

Best way to work imho is write your own boilerplate, pick up best practices from the various very good resources around and have ‘em somewhere as a starterpack, foundation, base, boilerplate, whatever name suits you. And even then throw out the bloat..