Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Our web development workflow is completely broken

blog.kenneth.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 121 posts

Re: Our web development workflow is completely broken

#21

Post by nkuttler »

wmt wrote: post #13

The workflow cycle suggested in the article is broken, but the normal web development workflow is not. I would definitely not restart my editor and browser after every edit! The workflow is actually just like with any other programming environment. You make changes to the code with your editor and then you reload the page or restart the application. If you really need to, you can use a debugger to see what's going on…

Indeed, his workflow is broken. For me the problem he describes doesn't even exist as tweaking pixels is such a minor part of my "web development" work. The vast majority is backend stuff or simple HTML that doesn't need debugging tools.

That being said, there is certainly room for improvement when problems happen.

Re: Our web development workflow is completely broken

#22

Post by davemo »

ssafejava wrote: post #10

The workflow might need polishing, but tools like SublimeInspector are not the answer. They are miles behind the Chrome Inspector. Try it if you're not convinced. The Chrome team has shown that they are very interested in moving the Inspector forward and have succeeded in integrating local files access via the editor, SASS support, Source Maps support, and a lot more. It is to the point where it would not be crazy to…

I'm interested in understanding why you are "ajax[ing] in > 200 source files" in development mode? This provides a pretty poor developer experience IMHO; I've found a much better workflow in setting up a single concatenated unminified bundle for development using grunt-concat-sourcemaps [1] to provide source mappings that Chrome Developer Tools can browse.

This gives you the snappy page loads you'd expect with a single script element in the page, and still allows you to debug in your separate source files due to the sourcemappings. The only difference between javascript in development and production should be the minification step.

[1] https://github.com/kozy4324/grunt-concat-sourcemap

Re: Our web development workflow is completely broken

#25

Post by chacham15 »

codelion wrote: post #18

You can use the Google Cache version if the server is down http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:G2FK1vS...

While these comments are indeed useful, they are an aside to the article. I wonder if there is a way to make it so that the link will redirect to the google cache version if the server is down automatically.

Re: Our web development workflow is completely broken

#26

Post by dakimov »

On one hand, the whole web stack is completely broken and insane.

On the other hand, if you use the right development methodologies such as unit testing, MVC, MVP, MVVM, and/or frameworks that translate statically typed or functional code to JS, the write-build-run-debug cycle is not an issue, because in general it only becomes an issue with a wrong approach to programming. This is totally the same as in non-web-programming.

Re: Our web development workflow is completely broken

#27

Post by foobarbazqux »

ritchiea wrote: post #16
thristian wrote: post #4

A small nitpick: the article lists the "IE Developer Toolbar" for IE6 first, and suggests that everybody else's development tools followed that model. In fact, the earliest reference I can find to the IE Developer Toolbar suggests[1] that it was released in early 2007, while the Firebug version history[2] shows Firebug v0.2 released in January 2006, so it's about a year older than IE's developer tools. Even if Firebu…

And once again the top comment doesn't do anything to continue the thoughtful discussion that began in the article, instead providing a pedantic correction.

If it weren't for pedants, we wouldn't have computers.

Re: Our web development workflow is completely broken

#28

Post by tinco »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #27
ritchiea wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And once again the top comment doesn't do anything to continue the thoughtful discussion that began in the article, instead providing a pedantic correction.

If it weren't for pedants, we wouldn't have computers.

Yes, because the introduction of the computer was a minor change to the world that only a pedant would have bothered with?

Re: Our web development workflow is completely broken

#30

Post by octatone2 »

Our frontend workflow is quite nice.

We use a static node server with live reload that monitors the source tree for modifications. It compiles and hot-swaps stylus files the moment you hit save (the ability to do that obviously depends on how we implemented style appliers for our view classes). Localization sources, and templates are also compiled on modification, and the browser is told to refresh once it detects a modification on javascript. This means any change I make in whatever text editor I chose, is immediately reflected in the browser. And since we built our front-end app with verbose and stateful routes, I never am taken away from the current view I am working on.

We plan on releasing our dev toolset open source soon, but we want to retool require and handlebars to be able to also be hot-swapped without reloading the browser.

I guess I am trying to say you are the master of your workflow, if it sucks, make it better.

Post reply on HN