Thanks @tisto,
I've been turning my attention (maybe turning it back) to theming Plone in the last 2 to 3 months. Coming from the Plone side of things, Volto didn't seem as compelling. However, your rationale makes sense, once I think about on-boarding persons experienced with standard front end tools.
I'm okay with compromising around defacto tooling, like letting go of mercurial for git or restructured text for markdown. It just takes a bit of mourning. I've drank deeply from the well of Diazo goodness and know the power, but it is what it is.
With respect to adoptiong Volto, I had a road block over the last 2 months because I wasn't comfortable with the state of the Volto documentation. I've started to "scratch my own itch" and just fix it when I can make time now.
my second contribution --> https://github.com/plone/volto/blob/deployment-docs/docs/source/07-deploying/02-pm2.md
I'm still due to make my first Volto theme... we'll see!