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Any details you can share about why the project is using rather obsolete tools (yarn, webpack)? I understand they're old and stable, but I took the project for

Any details you can share about why the project is using rather obsolete tools (yarn, webpack)? I understand they're old and stable, but I took the project for trying to be on the leading edge.

mojombo 5y ago
These were state of the art tools when we started work on Redwood more than two years ago. We're investigating other more modern alternatives, but swapping them out is a finicky and time consuming project and we've been focused on primary features. We will keep evaluating our dependencies and you may see some changes in v2!
- andrew_ 5y ago
  Thanks for the open answer, appreciate you checking out the question. Can't help but giggle at the downvotes.
thedavidprice 5y ago
Tell me more about "obsolete", because I don't think you mean what that word means?
- oaxacaoaxaca 5y ago
  22M weekly downloads – that's pretty much zero. So yeah definitely obsolete. /s
- ascendantlogic 5y ago
  It means no one has written a "Why we switched to webpack" article in years so that means it's completely obsolete and useless. Hacker News logic 101.
ravenstine 5y ago
Webpack is obsolete? Man, this field really does move quickly.
- vosper 5y ago
  I don’t think Webpack’s obsolete, it’s just got a lot of competition these days, most of which is easier to use.
- replygirl 5y ago
  webpack was older when rollup came out than gulp was when webpack came out. if not for create-react-app's impact, we'd probably all have moved on 2-3 years ago
  - boomskats 5y ago
    Wow. Weird reasoning. Never thought someone could be so openly ageist about… a module bundler. Could you maybe provide a better argument for why you think we’d all have moved on by now? Aside from ‘wow its not as new as the new thing’?
    - dgb23 5y ago
      I don’t know much about rollup, it doesn’t seem to be that different, but some of the newer tools are rust and go based and better tuned for performance during development. JS tooling is generally slow and weirdly complex, and people seem to acknowledge these issues and improve on them.
    - replygirl 5y ago
      that's just how our industry behaves. we like shiny new conveniences and tend to want to adopt them as soon as they're viable. this moment with postgres, node, webpack, babel, scss, and react feels off in a way. there are genuinely more capable alternatives to all of those that take less time to learn and work effectively with, perform better, cost less, and are trusted by big institutions. rails never felt this entrenched when it was the leading default, for example. there are a lot of positives to this that non-web engineers have seen for a long time--education becomes better and more accessible, people can have more stable and successful careers, and groups can take on more ambitious missions--it's just surprising from how i've seen web engineers approach their trade over the past 15 years
- deleted 5y ago
hu3 5y ago
Non frontend expert here trying to learn. What would you recommend instead o yarn and webpack? I have been using vite and npm in my small frontend projects.
- mmgutz 5y ago
  Older versions of npm (6 and below?) had many issues. Recent versions are more predictable. npm is fine. yarn 1 has always been a solid choice. There's nothing wrong with webpack except its lengthy build times. It's not a knock on webpack, it's more a knock on using JavaScript (node) for everything. Vite uses esbuild which is coded in Go. Next.js adopted swc (Rust) and hired the lead. I recommend Next for large react apps and vite for apps that would otherwise use create-react-app. Obviously if you're doing Vue, use vite.

Any details you can share about why the project is using rather obsolete tools (yarn, webpack)? I understand they're old and stable, but I took the project for trying to be on the leading edge.

mojombo 5y ago

These were state of the art tools when we started work on Redwood more than two years ago. We're investigating other more modern alternatives, but swapping them out is a finicky and time consuming project and we've been focused on primary features. We will keep evaluating our dependencies and you may see some changes in v2!

andrew_ 5y ago
Thanks for the open answer, appreciate you checking out the question. Can't help but giggle at the downvotes.

thedavidprice 5y ago

Tell me more about "obsolete", because I don't think you mean what that word means?

oaxacaoaxaca 5y ago
22M weekly downloads – that's pretty much zero. So yeah definitely obsolete. /s
ascendantlogic 5y ago
It means no one has written a "Why we switched to webpack" article in years so that means it's completely obsolete and useless. Hacker News logic 101.

ravenstine 5y ago

Webpack is obsolete? Man, this field really does move quickly.

vosper 5y ago
I don’t think Webpack’s obsolete, it’s just got a lot of competition these days, most of which is easier to use.
replygirl 5y ago
webpack was older when rollup came out than gulp was when webpack came out. if not for create-react-app's impact, we'd probably all have moved on 2-3 years ago
- boomskats 5y ago
  Wow. Weird reasoning. Never thought someone could be so openly ageist about… a module bundler. Could you maybe provide a better argument for why you think we’d all have moved on by now? Aside from ‘wow its not as new as the new thing’?
  - dgb23 5y ago
    I don’t know much about rollup, it doesn’t seem to be that different, but some of the newer tools are rust and go based and better tuned for performance during development. JS tooling is generally slow and weirdly complex, and people seem to acknowledge these issues and improve on them.
  - replygirl 5y ago
    that's just how our industry behaves. we like shiny new conveniences and tend to want to adopt them as soon as they're viable. this moment with postgres, node, webpack, babel, scss, and react feels off in a way. there are genuinely more capable alternatives to all of those that take less time to learn and work effectively with, perform better, cost less, and are trusted by big institutions. rails never felt this entrenched when it was the leading default, for example. there are a lot of positives to this that non-web engineers have seen for a long time--education becomes better and more accessible, people can have more stable and successful careers, and groups can take on more ambitious missions--it's just surprising from how i've seen web engineers approach their trade over the past 15 years
deleted 5y ago

hu3 5y ago

Non frontend expert here trying to learn. What would you recommend instead o yarn and webpack? I have been using vite and npm in my small frontend projects.

mmgutz 5y ago
Older versions of npm (6 and below?) had many issues. Recent versions are more predictable. npm is fine. yarn 1 has always been a solid choice. There's nothing wrong with webpack except its lengthy build times. It's not a knock on webpack, it's more a knock on using JavaScript (node) for everything. Vite uses esbuild which is coded in Go. Next.js adopted swc (Rust) and hired the lead. I recommend Next for large react apps and vite for apps that would otherwise use create-react-app. Obviously if you're doing Vue, use vite.