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Using Neutrino to jump-start modern JavaScript development

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31–40 of 68 posts

Re: Using Neutrino to jump-start modern JavaScript development

#31
post #15

Maybe it's just me, but I didn't find it all that difficult to get started with webpack after a few tutorials and samples. This seems like it hides away something that people should probably understand, which isn't all that difficult to get started with. Also when you start combining different packages in webpack (or encounter an error (or want to make some decisions in the config script)), the standard copy/paste bo…

This was my biggest complaint with the Angular 2 cli generated app. I had to dig to even find out they were using webpack behind the scenes. And I know they just want to utilize it without troubling newbies, but I wish they had some means of customizing it. I think it's on their roadmap, or just being requested a lot on github. There's so much you can do with webpack that it's a shame it's hidden.

The inability to customize webpack was sometimes a pain point for me. There were a few things I wanted to do that would have been much easier if I could just play around with it. Fortunately, they've added the ability to get yourself a webpack config!

https://github.com/angular/angular-cli/commit/7ac0d05

http://www.dzurico.com/angular-cli-with-the-super-powers/

Re: Using Neutrino to jump-start modern JavaScript development

#32
post #18

I think this is a cool tool, but it's somewhere between funny and depressing that the article brags about how they were able to get a 'Hello, world!' program up in less than 5 minutes .

A Hello World GUI app, which is a fairly important distinction. Also one that runs on any machine with a web browser.

But creating and running a Hello World GUI app for iOS only takes a few seconds, even when running it on your live device.

Re: Using Neutrino to jump-start modern JavaScript development

#33
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Hello World GUI app, which is a fairly important distinction. Also one that runs on any machine with a web browser.

But creating and running a Hello World GUI app for iOS only takes a few seconds, even when running it on your live device.

Not really an apt comparison as iOS is a complete ecosystem controlled by one party, so choices are made for you. I'd say comparing it to a Hello World GUI app in C++ would be, as C++ also has a proliferation of build tools and graphics libraries that you have to choice before you can make a Hello World GUI app.

Re: Using Neutrino to jump-start modern JavaScript development

#35
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Hello World GUI app, which is a fairly important distinction. Also one that runs on any machine with a web browser.

But creating and running a Hello World GUI app for iOS only takes a few seconds, even when running it on your live device.

He said "less than 5 minutes". It took me roughly 1.5 minutes, and most of that was just downloading build stuff.

How long does it take you to download XCode and tools and get a "Hello World" iOS app running? It'd take me much longer than 1.5 minutes.

Re: Using Neutrino to jump-start modern JavaScript development

#37
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have great respect for you but this seems a bit mean spirited. Why shouldn't devs want to be as many things as possible? Is css-in-js is more ridiculous than regular CSS? I've left regular CSS behind and gained a lot of sanity.

It's just my opinion of course :) but I think css-in-js is a step backwards in the majority of cases. I do like CSS modules in terms of scoping / modularity, but I don't want to replace CSS with (what I consider to be) really gross JS implementations. I don't want to discourage people trying new things, but I also don't want people to waste thousands of collective hours dealing with crazy configuration. I think toyin…

I think you are conflating multiple things. There's several JS styling libraries have literally zero configuration (and don't involve build tooling, etc). They "just work" out of the box.

Re: Using Neutrino to jump-start modern JavaScript development

#39

Maybe it's just me, but I didn't find it all that difficult to get started with webpack after a few tutorials and samples. This seems like it hides away something that people should probably understand, which isn't all that difficult to get started with. Also when you start combining different packages in webpack (or encounter an error (or want to make some decisions in the config script)), the standard copy/paste bo…

I personally find Webpack (and the documentation) to be a little maddening once you want to go beyond standard presets. Why doesn't this file have sourcemaps? Why do some Webpack plugins output the name of the entry point while others output the name of the source file? Why is this file being emitted in the wrong place? There are definitely benefits to using Webpack, but it's a lot harder to debug than a bunch of Makefiles and UNIX pipes.

Re: Using Neutrino to jump-start modern JavaScript development

#40
post #20

Does anybody just write plain JS ?

Yes, actually. As soon as you recognize that the DOM API is rich and fast and you understand how MVC works, you actually get much cleaner code by not mixing HTML and JavaScript. My original explorations of doing this are at https://github.com/madhadron/mvc_for_the_web.

When you understand this, React's shadow DOM and JSX are completely unnecessary.

Combine it with the fact that grid layout is expected to be in the stable releases of Chrome and Firefox in the next month, and, if you have no legacy browser requirements as I happen not to, web application development becomes somewhat reasonable for the first time since I began doing it in the '90's.

Admittedly, when I started trying to build a library out of this (https://github.com/madhadron/allorryll), I put it in TypeScript, but I'm also the guy who did serial port and Firewire camera control in Haskell.

Obviously this doesn't apply to writing documents on the web, where JavaScript should only be added as part of a structure that will gracefully degrade.

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