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In the past two years I have gone Webpack -> Parcel -> Webpack -> Vite -> Rollup I live for the day bundlers are no longer needed. The state of modern JS such

by donatj 2y ago

In the past two years I have gone Webpack -> Parcel -> Webpack -> Vite -> Rollup I live for the day bundlers are no longer needed. The state of modern JS such that much of it does not work on the web by default is absurd. All the work that's been spent building better and better bundlers would have been better spent fixing the blight that Node, CJS and the death of Bower caused to begin with. How we ended up in a place where most JS is server-first and needs to be adapted for the web is beyond me.

conradfr 2y ago
Most JS can't be server side.
- Zanfa 2y ago
  Sure it can. Just because somebody's decided to write a SPA CRUD app doesn't mean that the same couldn't be done on the server (whether Node or something else).
  - conradfr 2y ago
    Won't most Node apps still have client side JavaScript?
    - Zanfa 2y ago
      Some, sure. But the amount that a typical SPA CRUD app has? Not even close. I know it probably comes down to devs starting out with React and then thinking that that's how hard webdev is supposed to be. But the reality is that the vast majority of apps don't need to be SPAs with Reacts/Formiks/Flux-derivatives/Routers and would be faster to develop, offer better UX and have a single digit fraction of the boilerplate code to do the equivalent.
Hamuko 2y ago
I still have some old projects on Bower and I'm not sure what could make me find the energy to update them – especially since the JavaScript community will coalesce around something else in a few months anyways.
gherkinnn 2y ago
https://world.hey.com/dhh/you-can-t-get-faster-than-no-build-7a44131c https://world.hey.com/dhh/you-can-t-get-faster-than-no-build... There is always the option of not building.
- incrudible 2y ago
  > not building is faster Maybe if your goal is to minimize build times, but my goal is minimizing iteration times. With a decent build tool, it is much faster to bundle up a bunch of JS files and serve them as a single file rather than letting the browser (or even node) figure that out. This is also my peeve about the vite dev server (that makes individual requests for each source file), which is slower on a full reload than plain esbuild.
- donatj 2y ago
  Oh I'd love to, and I did for years. The problem is using 99% of third party libraries without building has become nearly impossible.

by donatj 2y ago

conradfr 2y ago

Most JS can't be server side.

Zanfa 2y ago
Sure it can. Just because somebody's decided to write a SPA CRUD app doesn't mean that the same couldn't be done on the server (whether Node or something else).
- conradfr 2y ago
  Won't most Node apps still have client side JavaScript?
  - Zanfa 2y ago
    Some, sure. But the amount that a typical SPA CRUD app has? Not even close. I know it probably comes down to devs starting out with React and then thinking that that's how hard webdev is supposed to be. But the reality is that the vast majority of apps don't need to be SPAs with Reacts/Formiks/Flux-derivatives/Routers and would be faster to develop, offer better UX and have a single digit fraction of the boilerplate code to do the equivalent.

Hamuko 2y ago

I still have some old projects on Bower and I'm not sure what could make me find the energy to update them – especially since the JavaScript community will coalesce around something else in a few months anyways.

gherkinnn 2y ago

https://world.hey.com/dhh/you-can-t-get-faster-than-no-build-7a44131c https://world.hey.com/dhh/you-can-t-get-faster-than-no-build... There is always the option of not building.

incrudible 2y ago
> not building is faster Maybe if your goal is to minimize build times, but my goal is minimizing iteration times. With a decent build tool, it is much faster to bundle up a bunch of JS files and serve them as a single file rather than letting the browser (or even node) figure that out. This is also my peeve about the vite dev server (that makes individual requests for each source file), which is slower on a full reload than plain esbuild.
donatj 2y ago
Oh I'd love to, and I did for years. The problem is using 99% of third party libraries without building has become nearly impossible.