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Grunt and RequireJS are out, it's all about Gulp and Browserify

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Re: Grunt and RequireJS are out, it's all about Gulp and Browserify

#91

Post by phpnode »

emilis_info wrote: post #60
shadowmint wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really no. The makefile syntax is obscure and hard to maintain. We've been there. We don't need to go there again. The stories of 'recursive makefile dependency hell' deserve to stay back in the dark ages of the 90s where they belong. There's a reason lots of people are inventing new systems for doing these sorts of tasks (for example, spawning a local webserver to work with after compiling less and coffee files and…

Yes, Makefile syntax gets somewhat obscure after the simplicity and power of target definitions and variables (e.g. http://mrbook.org/tutorials/make/ ). Yes, Make does a poorer job at some of the tasks (although spawning a webserver process isn't one of them). But I don't think having to write a plugin for EVERYTHING ( http://gratimax.github.io/search-gulp-plugins/ ) is a sustainable answer. P.S. I am sorry, I search…

He's probably referring to this old article - http://aegis.sourceforge.net/auug97.pdf which suggests that recursive make is bad because it can cause a lot of unnecessary processing even if you only changed one or two files. I think this just comes down to how you're using make - for me recursive make works just fine because I tend to run the specific target I need while I'm working (as it's usually in my cwd anyway) and only run the root `make all` on deployment.

Re: Grunt and RequireJS are out, it's all about Gulp and Browserify

#92

Post by moystard »

akbar501 wrote: post #9
untog wrote: post #3

Gulp looks very interesting. Browserify vs. RequireJS seems more complex to me, though - it isn't difficult to use RequireJS in the CommonJS pattern. When I tried Browserify it was incredibly slow to build - but that might have been me setting it up wrong in Grunt...

I think the author oversimplified the choice of Browserify and RequireJS. They have some overlap, but are not 100% replacements. Both have the concept of modules, and they overlap in this area. Browserify allows you to use Node style modules in the browser. RequireJS allows you to asynchronously load parts of your app, while Browserify bundles all JS into a single file.

I don't know have experience with Browserify, but if it does not support modular architecture, then it's more a regression in comparison with Require.js

Using the r.js optimiser, we are able to create several modules for our SPA that include logic and templates, and load them at runtime only when required. By default, we load the most used bits of our application, and load the rest when the user accesses the more rarely used views.

Re: Grunt and RequireJS are out, it's all about Gulp and Browserify

#93

Post by eknkc »

tlrobinson wrote: post #24

I've been using a different strategy lately: no explicit build process at all, just use middleware (like browserify) to automatically compile/compress/concatenate, and an HTTP cache in production to store the results (either middleware, or external such as nginx/Varnish/CloudFlare/whatever). This helps with the principle of minimizing divergence between development and production environments. It's worked well for me…

This worked fine for us for a year or so.

Now, I sometimes need to change stuff when there are a couple thousand online visitors on one of our sites. Their requests gang up on middlewares and causes duplicate compilations. We already have reverse proxy servers to keep duplicate requests waiting for the first one but that still leaks due to different browser capabilities and stuff.

Having everything prebuilt makes more sense at this point.

Re: Grunt and RequireJS are out, it's all about Gulp and Browserify

#95

Post by n1ghtmare_ »

peter_l_downs wrote: post #83
noname123 wrote: post #37

This is a tangential question, but how do front-end people feel about the constant change in the field? I worked in the front-end and followed the trends for years and have found the changes difficult to follow. In 1997, the rage was VB and lots of cottage companies set up and advertising custom ActiveX widgets, on the web one had to learn ColdFusion and HTML/CSS. In early 2000's, VB6 was retired in favor of .net and…

I'm frankly overwhelmed of learning and being exposed to new technologies. The physical draining feeling of learning new keywords to fulfill the same urges is as if I have watched 15 years of porn following from the grainy days of Jenna Jameson on VHS to the heady-days of Internet dial-up gonzo porn of the early 2000's that really explored anal (Gauge, Taylor Rain) to the streaming flash videos of Web 2.0 (Sasha Grey…

The man really knows his porn.

Re: Grunt and RequireJS are out, it's all about Gulp and Browserify

#97

Post by jamesu »

noname123 wrote: post #37

This is a tangential question, but how do front-end people feel about the constant change in the field? I worked in the front-end and followed the trends for years and have found the changes difficult to follow. In 1997, the rage was VB and lots of cottage companies set up and advertising custom ActiveX widgets, on the web one had to learn ColdFusion and HTML/CSS. In early 2000's, VB6 was retired in favor of .net and…

As I've gotten older I've noticed I've become more pessimistic of changes in the field. Occasionally a really good idea comes along which sticks. A lot of the time though it feels like a new hit framework is cooked up every week, and experience has taught me that this weeks hip framework can quickly turn into last years boring support nightmare.

In general I think we're heading towards better things... you just have to watch out for the warts along the way.

Re: Grunt and RequireJS are out, it's all about Gulp and Browserify

#99

Post by mrcactu5 »

At least the guy admits he is a first-adopter.

All I really get from this blog is that some influential guys approve of these two new JS libraries.

For someone who still builds website HTML, what are Grunt vs Gulp originally supposed to do? And why does Grunt do it better?

And a similar questiion for RequireJS / Browserify?

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