A stack is also technical debt, non-transferable knowledge, accelerated obsolescence, and vendor lock-in. That means fragility and overall unnecessary complication. Popular stacks inevitably turn into cargo cults that build in spite of the web, not for it.
The web platform does not require build toolchains. Always default to, and regress to, the fundamentals of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. Those core standards are the web stack.
Every UI control you roll yourself is a liability. You have to design it, test it, ship it, document it, debug it, maintain it — the list goes on.
It makes you wonder why we insist on rolling (or styling) our own common UI controls so often. Perhaps we’d be better off asking: What are the fewest amount of components we have to build to deliver value to our users?
This is handy—a collection of font stacks using system fonts. You can see which ones are currently installed on your machine too.
The most performant web font is no web font.
A look at different font stacks out there in the wild.