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> Having a build step also increases activation energy and friction Yes this! As an interpreted language it should not need a build step. Every project should

• Zelphyr 3y ago
  You guys are singing the song of my people. For years I've been confounded at the idea that we need to be building/compiling interpreted code. And the tooling... my God! I know this makes me sound like an old man (because I am) but, it used to be all I needed was an editor, an FTP client, and a browser. write-upload-refresh. Today, I find VS Code, `git push`, and a browser still serves me very well.
• pmontra 3y ago
  I'm also against building and compiling (I work with Python and Ruby on the backend) but there were good reasons to have those steps, at least in the past and probably still now. Short and very incomplete list, feel free to reply and add points: * slow network, especially on mobile * reduce the size of the download by minifying * reduce the number of calls by bundling files in a single one * Inconsistent JS and HTML feature support among browsers * transpiling to a common older version of JS * add polyfills to implement missing features * add widgets to implement fucked up default implementations or widgets that are nearly impossible to standardize (date and time pickers might need tons of features and are projects on their own)
  • kitsunesoba 3y ago
    Most of those points could be taken care of by building only when deploying though, skipping the phase during development. I think most of the annoyance with a build step comes from how you can’t do anything unless the tooling for it is set up, as well as how it gunks up the tweak → reload cycle.