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My experience also. As a backend engineer trying to create a front end app, the whole toolchain of JS, bundlers, minifiers, Typescript, React... is basically; w

by hudo 4y ago

My experience also. As a backend engineer trying to create a front end app, the whole toolchain of JS, bundlers, minifiers, Typescript, React... is basically; works if you have one magical init script that wires up everything, and much more than you really need since its tailored for more complex apps, but if you need just simplest thing, like run Typescript app in browser, well, good luck with that! Hundreds of tutorials (unofficial blog posts) on internents, none of them work. Front end dev work is broken. Also, funny experience: asked few senior FE devs how to configure React, webpack and TS manually, absolutely nobody could do it.

btbuildem 4y ago
The best part: all of the utils in the tool chains "evolve" and so your one script has to be regularly modified and kept up to date. A project that "just worked" but has been on ice for several months, will now not even build after you pull updates etc. It's infuriating. I used to work on a front-end team, and a good 20% of our time was spent babying the build chain, I kid you not.
threads2 4y ago
Always wanted to learn about webpack - doesn't feel good using CRA (create-react-app), needing to configure webpack, ejecting CRA, and then being the "owner" of the config without knowing anything about it - thanks for the impetus.
maxloh 4y ago
It is not quite hard to learn actually. You just need to go through the webpack Concepts section[0]. Documentations in the JavaScript ecosystem are quite good and explanatory compared to other languages (like Java). Not every front-end developers learn the internals of the tool they chose, like create-react-app. Most of them settled down if the solution "just work". [0]: https://webpack.js.org/concepts/ https://webpack.js.org/concepts/
- lucidguppy 4y ago
  X is not hard, you just have to Y. Be careful of these statements, you have to understand why a person says X is hard. The OP stated he did extensive work trying to get it to work and found it difficult. You posted one link out of thousands. When talking about these things - its not like there's a problem with one solution. There's one problem with thousands of answers that are frustratingly close to correct, but not correct. That's why X is hard.
  - BigJono 4y ago
    That "one link out of thousands" is the first page of the official docs for pretty much the only complex bit of getting started doing frontend. If people are getting stuck because they're trying to get into something by following a "Frontend stack in 10 minutes!" blog post that introduces 10 dependencies and aims to skip all the actual learning bit in the interest of "getting up to speed" then they fucking deserve to get stuck. There's only thousands of answers because everyone is too stupid to just go and read the obviously correct one and thousands of people try and exploit that for some industry cred or something.
    - fendy3002 4y ago
      I agree with this view, but not everything is black and white. Webpack is hard because it's a tooling, and a big and complex one at that. And usually it lacks resources other that official documentations in which can be used to learn/debug it. However your view is also correct. They're too overwhelmed with the capabilities and complexities of webpack that they missed how there are hundreds of working webpack configuration for react etc, that they can use as reference, or how easy it is to be configured when you follow the tutorial and know what is babel, loader, presets, etc.
  - s__s 4y ago
    He’s saying X is not hard if you read X’s docs. I don’t think that’s unreasonable. What’s unreasonable is this culture in web dev that you shouldn’t have to read the docs!
  - TameAntelope 4y ago
- dahauns 4y ago
  You're kidding, right? Just going through the Concepts of webpack doesn't even scratch the surface - and will arguably leave many unsuspecting devs more confused than before, by e.g. still insisting on calling itself a "module bundler". You're a build system, ffs!
  - maxloh 4y ago
    You cannot learn programming just by reading. Try using it in practice. The concepts part should be enough to get you started for a simple vanilla JavaScript project. If you need more (e.g. TypeScript/JSX/CSS support), You will need some third-party loaders or plugins. webpack itself is just a JavaScript bundler.
    - dahauns 4y ago
      Well duh. So it's "You just need to go through the webpack Concepts section"...except if you want to actually do some work with it. See, that's the thing: If like OP you are an experienced developer freshly coming to web frontend development, the Concepts pages of the webpack docs will tell you very little that you'd find unfamiliar. It's stuff that you've seen a variation of in countless other build systems. (At least that's how it was with me all those years ago.) But as the docs themselves say: "Plugins are the backbone of webpack". And that's where Pandora's box opens...and where the designation as "just a JavaScript bundler" becomes ridiculous.
blenderdt 4y ago
Not only this. Try to change the app two years later. Dependencies gone, wrong NPM version, Webpack config depricated and what not. That's why I like to use vanilla JS as much as possible. It will be maintainable years later.
- iamsaitam 4y ago
  Yes, if you don't fix your dependencies. But that will happen in any language.
- 8bitsrule 4y ago
  And even then, browsers will probably respond differently. After a recent FF upgrade, it balked at JS that worked fine for years ... on occasion, not always ...because: navigator.onLine === true, internet.connection === false.

by hudo 4y ago

btbuildem 4y ago

The best part: all of the utils in the tool chains "evolve" and so your one script has to be regularly modified and kept up to date. A project that "just worked" but has been on ice for several months, will now not even build after you pull updates etc. It's infuriating. I used to work on a front-end team, and a good 20% of our time was spent babying the build chain, I kid you not.

threads2 4y ago

Always wanted to learn about webpack - doesn't feel good using CRA (create-react-app), needing to configure webpack, ejecting CRA, and then being the "owner" of the config without knowing anything about it - thanks for the impetus.

maxloh 4y ago

It is not quite hard to learn actually. You just need to go through the webpack Concepts section[0]. Documentations in the JavaScript ecosystem are quite good and explanatory compared to other languages (like Java). Not every front-end developers learn the internals of the tool they chose, like create-react-app. Most of them settled down if the solution "just work". [0]: https://webpack.js.org/concepts/ https://webpack.js.org/concepts/

lucidguppy 4y ago
X is not hard, you just have to Y. Be careful of these statements, you have to understand why a person says X is hard. The OP stated he did extensive work trying to get it to work and found it difficult. You posted one link out of thousands. When talking about these things - its not like there's a problem with one solution. There's one problem with thousands of answers that are frustratingly close to correct, but not correct. That's why X is hard.
- BigJono 4y ago
  That "one link out of thousands" is the first page of the official docs for pretty much the only complex bit of getting started doing frontend. If people are getting stuck because they're trying to get into something by following a "Frontend stack in 10 minutes!" blog post that introduces 10 dependencies and aims to skip all the actual learning bit in the interest of "getting up to speed" then they fucking deserve to get stuck. There's only thousands of answers because everyone is too stupid to just go and read the obviously correct one and thousands of people try and exploit that for some industry cred or something.
  - fendy3002 4y ago
    I agree with this view, but not everything is black and white. Webpack is hard because it's a tooling, and a big and complex one at that. And usually it lacks resources other that official documentations in which can be used to learn/debug it. However your view is also correct. They're too overwhelmed with the capabilities and complexities of webpack that they missed how there are hundreds of working webpack configuration for react etc, that they can use as reference, or how easy it is to be configured when you follow the tutorial and know what is babel, loader, presets, etc.
- s__s 4y ago
  He’s saying X is not hard if you read X’s docs. I don’t think that’s unreasonable. What’s unreasonable is this culture in web dev that you shouldn’t have to read the docs!
- TameAntelope 4y ago
dahauns 4y ago
You're kidding, right? Just going through the Concepts of webpack doesn't even scratch the surface - and will arguably leave many unsuspecting devs more confused than before, by e.g. still insisting on calling itself a "module bundler". You're a build system, ffs!
- maxloh 4y ago
  You cannot learn programming just by reading. Try using it in practice. The concepts part should be enough to get you started for a simple vanilla JavaScript project. If you need more (e.g. TypeScript/JSX/CSS support), You will need some third-party loaders or plugins. webpack itself is just a JavaScript bundler.
  - dahauns 4y ago
    Well duh. So it's "You just need to go through the webpack Concepts section"...except if you want to actually do some work with it. See, that's the thing: If like OP you are an experienced developer freshly coming to web frontend development, the Concepts pages of the webpack docs will tell you very little that you'd find unfamiliar. It's stuff that you've seen a variation of in countless other build systems. (At least that's how it was with me all those years ago.) But as the docs themselves say: "Plugins are the backbone of webpack". And that's where Pandora's box opens...and where the designation as "just a JavaScript bundler" becomes ridiculous.

blenderdt 4y ago

Not only this. Try to change the app two years later. Dependencies gone, wrong NPM version, Webpack config depricated and what not. That's why I like to use vanilla JS as much as possible. It will be maintainable years later.

iamsaitam 4y ago
Yes, if you don't fix your dependencies. But that will happen in any language.
8bitsrule 4y ago
And even then, browsers will probably respond differently. After a recent FF upgrade, it balked at JS that worked fine for years ... on occasion, not always ...because: navigator.onLine === true, internet.connection === false.