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Front-end developers want more than to just run code, though. We want to be able to use modern JS and CSS without worry. We want live-reloading of styles. We wa

by duhi88 8y ago

Front-end developers want more than to just run code, though. We want to be able to use modern JS and CSS without worry. We want live-reloading of styles. We want to minify and clean up our code, and to break it into smaller chunks. We want code-linting to keep ourselves and others in check. All of those things I see as being essential to building quality code in a reasonable amount of time (and enjoying it), and all of those things are actually really easy to set up in Webpack (it's all in their docs). Webpack was overwhelming before I read through their docs, and their docs are not as nice as VueJS's docs, but it isn't as bad as everybody makes it out to be. Really.

arkh 8y ago
Shouldn't an IDE be able to do most of this?
divan 8y ago
You're right, web development is more than just run a code, but it's not an order of magnitude more. If you use sane defaults, find the most common patterns and workflows, identify trade-offs and come up with elegant conventions, you'll be able to hide the complexity and make it simple for people to learn, grasp, use and, consequently, to contribute and improve. But simplicity is complicated and it's way more easier to do a feature-rich extra-configurable monster and write books on how to use it. As for the "reasonable" part – it's extremely subjective and we all should account our judgements for that. Back in 2005 I was OK with the fact that I need to go for the coffee break when I start compiling a C++ program. If you'd asked me "do you think C++ compilation time is slow" those days, I would reply "absolutely not" and find explanations why it's reasonable. Now, after Google couldn't stand C++'s complexity and compilation times and created Go language with its subsecond compilation times, my understanding of reasonable has shifted dramatically. It's just doesn't make sense anymore to compile something more than 10 seconds, and 15 mins compilation times are now in a "madness" bucket.

by duhi88 8y ago

arkh 8y ago

Shouldn't an IDE be able to do most of this?

divan 8y ago

You're right, web development is more than just run a code, but it's not an order of magnitude more. If you use sane defaults, find the most common patterns and workflows, identify trade-offs and come up with elegant conventions, you'll be able to hide the complexity and make it simple for people to learn, grasp, use and, consequently, to contribute and improve. But simplicity is complicated and it's way more easier to do a feature-rich extra-configurable monster and write books on how to use it. As for the "reasonable" part – it's extremely subjective and we all should account our judgements for that. Back in 2005 I was OK with the fact that I need to go for the coffee break when I start compiling a C++ program. If you'd asked me "do you think C++ compilation time is slow" those days, I would reply "absolutely not" and find explanations why it's reasonable. Now, after Google couldn't stand C++'s complexity and compilation times and created Go language with its subsecond compilation times, my understanding of reasonable has shifted dramatically. It's just doesn't make sense anymore to compile something more than 10 seconds, and 15 mins compilation times are now in a "madness" bucket.