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Discussion on: Grunt then Gulp then Webpack now Parcel 🤖🔥🤔

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀 • Edited

Vue cli, and NG cli both abstract Webpack to the point that it's teivial, yep that's a fair, but misses the point of my post, how many tools where needed to get to this point? It's tools upon tools upon tools heavily abstracting the route from point A to point B, simple JavaScript goes, in complex JavaScript comes out. That's what bothers me. JavaScript has become a compiled to interpret language in effect yet there is no official recognition of this fact nor compiler speciation unlike c++ where clang g++ and more all try to follow an official specification. You would hope for a singular level of tooling, a hypothetical es universal compiler of sorts that could produce an Angular, Vue, React, Vanilla and so much more, the rules for which, all coming from a governing body, simple JavaScript goes in, optimized smaller and complex JavaScript comes out. Framework would then be authored following this predictable specification, as opposed to change the tooling they are built on, trying to keep up with the next new hotness build tool.

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daneren2005 profile image
Scott

I'm not sure what you mean complex js comes out. The tools are to bundle, which doesn't change the code, to minify which doesn't change what the code does and does obey a spec, and to allow the latest version of the js spec while working with older browsers that don't know that syntax yet. None of that is super complex and they all solve really problems that attacking the tools doesn't solve.

Sure there other parts like single file Vue components, but they also are fairly straightforward tools that arent particularly hard to understand. I guess I have done all of this stuff without the simple method webpack provides so I understand exactly what all of these tools are doing and why they are there. Does this seem like its an interpreted language to you because what the tools are doing seems like magic?

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

This is no attack on any particular tool 🤯, I hope you didn't read it that way.

Complex as in this simple src code becomes larger and more complex as the features you require such as require are shipped in the bundle, const becomes var classes become functions again. Your bundle code indeed does change depending on what your doing.

I think there are crossed wires here, I will leave it at that.