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Do you somehow think that we wait until some charitable Ruby developer comes to the rescue whenever we need something done? Editors like Brackets are built fro

Do you somehow think that we wait until some charitable Ruby developer comes to the rescue whenever we need something done? Editors like Brackets are built from the ground up using JavaScript. Any plugin built for it is made using JS. The front-end build system / tool-chain that I use has been coded by a handful of front-end developers and uses Gulp (previously Grunt but we migrated) as its base. The repository has 620 commits so far and does everything from minifying and bundling code to generating the 10+ of favicon images needed on modern projects. Even big names such as Webpack are JavaScript based and maintained by JavaScript developers.

yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
Just because lots of people are doing it, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. What was Gulp’s big idea? Streaming? Congratulations, your operating system has had this facility for over 40 years. Some of the Gulp plugins are a hoot too. You can download and install a plugin to help you copy files. Our operating systems already know how to copy files. This is pretty basic stuff. And Grunt? Grunt doesn’t even have streaming. All transformations are done with disk IO as an intermediary. No surprise then that it’s very slow. Minifying code? Do you use jsmin by any chance? Because that’s written in C. Generating your favicon images? Is it ImageMagick you use? Because that’s also written in C. Does Brackets do anything novel? Does it outperform editors written in compiled programming languages? I would be extremely surprised if it did.
- Raphmedia 8y ago
  First you claimed that having a toolset built using familiar technologies was useful to nobody (0% of developers!). So I answered that those who do not gain anything from this are not the target demographic of Stylelint anyway. That experienced developers actually gain from having a toolset built in a familiar language. Then you declared that this is useless because no developers actually work on the products they will use for development. I responded by giving your examples where this happens. Now, you are claiming that those tools are pointless because they use libraries in other languages or because there are alternatives in other languages. What is your point exactly?
  - yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
    You have misunderstood me. > First you claimed that having a toolset built using familiar technologies was useful to nobody (0% of developers!) That's not exactly what I wrote. > Then you declared that this is useless because no developers actually work on the products they will use for development. I responded by giving your examples where this happens. Wrong again. A very small subset of developers actually build their own times. Writing a Gulp configuration is not an example of building your own tool. That would be an example of using a tool, and writing your own configuration for that tool. This is the core of my argument. If you can't grasp this, then we can't get anywhere. > Now, you are claiming that those tools are pointless because they use libraries in other languages or because there are alternatives in other languages. That isn't what I am claiming. I am claiming that most web developers do not build their own tools. Writing some glue code (shell script, Makefile, Gulpfile, whatever), which calls out to another tool (like the aforementioned tools written in C), is not an example of writing your own tool. Do you care what language your linter is written in? No. You do not. You only care about its API. You only care that it's easy enough to use from JavaScript. If you can write `gulp do-the-linting`, and it lints your JavaScript, you don't actually care what language the linting engine was implemented in. Almost — again almost — 0% of web developers care about that.
    - Raphmedia 8y ago
      > If you can't grasp this, then we can't get anywhere. I have the impression that this is not an issue coming from me not being able to grasp this concept but from your inability to communicate efficiently without using a condescending tone.
- tracker1 8y ago
  As for Gulp... I don't use it anymore... I know most of the guys behind it, and I was a proponent early on, as grunt was painful in contrast. These days, most of my build is using Webpack via npm scripts. In fact, most of my CI/CD orchestration utilizes the scripts section of a package.json via npm and a scripts/ directory with JS scripts that run via Node in Windows, Mac and Linux and in our CI/CD pipelines which include Windows and Docker targets without issue. It's cross platform and it works. The fact is, node/js is good enough for pretty much everything, and you're an ignorant snob. That last part is really the only thing I can gather from your opinions here.
  - yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
    Wow. Groundbreaking stuff! Take your ad hominems elsewhere, thanks.

yakshaving_jgt 8y ago

Just because lots of people are doing it, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. What was Gulp’s big idea? Streaming? Congratulations, your operating system has had this facility for over 40 years. Some of the Gulp plugins are a hoot too. You can download and install a plugin to help you copy files. Our operating systems already know how to copy files. This is pretty basic stuff. And Grunt? Grunt doesn’t even have streaming. All transformations are done with disk IO as an intermediary. No surprise then that it’s very slow. Minifying code? Do you use jsmin by any chance? Because that’s written in C. Generating your favicon images? Is it ImageMagick you use? Because that’s also written in C. Does Brackets do anything novel? Does it outperform editors written in compiled programming languages? I would be extremely surprised if it did.

Raphmedia 8y ago
First you claimed that having a toolset built using familiar technologies was useful to nobody (0% of developers!). So I answered that those who do not gain anything from this are not the target demographic of Stylelint anyway. That experienced developers actually gain from having a toolset built in a familiar language. Then you declared that this is useless because no developers actually work on the products they will use for development. I responded by giving your examples where this happens. Now, you are claiming that those tools are pointless because they use libraries in other languages or because there are alternatives in other languages. What is your point exactly?
- yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
  You have misunderstood me. > First you claimed that having a toolset built using familiar technologies was useful to nobody (0% of developers!) That's not exactly what I wrote. > Then you declared that this is useless because no developers actually work on the products they will use for development. I responded by giving your examples where this happens. Wrong again. A very small subset of developers actually build their own times. Writing a Gulp configuration is not an example of building your own tool. That would be an example of using a tool, and writing your own configuration for that tool. This is the core of my argument. If you can't grasp this, then we can't get anywhere. > Now, you are claiming that those tools are pointless because they use libraries in other languages or because there are alternatives in other languages. That isn't what I am claiming. I am claiming that most web developers do not build their own tools. Writing some glue code (shell script, Makefile, Gulpfile, whatever), which calls out to another tool (like the aforementioned tools written in C), is not an example of writing your own tool. Do you care what language your linter is written in? No. You do not. You only care about its API. You only care that it's easy enough to use from JavaScript. If you can write `gulp do-the-linting`, and it lints your JavaScript, you don't actually care what language the linting engine was implemented in. Almost — again almost — 0% of web developers care about that.
  - Raphmedia 8y ago
    > If you can't grasp this, then we can't get anywhere. I have the impression that this is not an issue coming from me not being able to grasp this concept but from your inability to communicate efficiently without using a condescending tone.
tracker1 8y ago
As for Gulp... I don't use it anymore... I know most of the guys behind it, and I was a proponent early on, as grunt was painful in contrast. These days, most of my build is using Webpack via npm scripts. In fact, most of my CI/CD orchestration utilizes the scripts section of a package.json via npm and a scripts/ directory with JS scripts that run via Node in Windows, Mac and Linux and in our CI/CD pipelines which include Windows and Docker targets without issue. It's cross platform and it works. The fact is, node/js is good enough for pretty much everything, and you're an ignorant snob. That last part is really the only thing I can gather from your opinions here.
- yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
  Wow. Groundbreaking stuff! Take your ad hominems elsewhere, thanks.