Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain • Hacker News Board

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#11

Post by gear54rus » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #5

Maybe this is intuitive to JS devs, but what are the advantages of "zero third-party dependencies" and "being a comprehensive tool for the processing of anything JS related" or any of the other selling points of Rome? It seems like an impressive project, but it's not obvious to me what its actual benefits are.

It's not intuitive to me as a JS dev too... Are you guys gonna re-implement typescript for example? Where does 'no deps' line get drawn?

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#12

Post by thinkloop » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #5

Maybe this is intuitive to JS devs, but what are the advantages of "zero third-party dependencies" and "being a comprehensive tool for the processing of anything JS related" or any of the other selling points of Rome? It seems like an impressive project, but it's not obvious to me what its actual benefits are.

It's a common story: monolith or microservices? Linux do one thing well or holistic cohesion? Mega repo or many small ones? There are pros and cons. Nothing in the universe is currently more fragile than a modern js toolchain tho.

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#13

Post by capableweb » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

It says "No Third Party Dependencies" but 95% of the code is written in TypeScript, so it isn't even JavaScript and the entire thing is built on top of one big dependency.

Would not be a problem if it didn't sell itself as "zero third party dependencies" while being built on top of one that is not even JavaScript... Might as well built the tool in any other language that would have been better for the task.

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#14

Post by dschnurr » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #5

Maybe this is intuitive to JS devs, but what are the advantages of "zero third-party dependencies" and "being a comprehensive tool for the processing of anything JS related" or any of the other selling points of Rome? It seems like an impressive project, but it's not obvious to me what its actual benefits are.

Starting a new JS project these days can be a huge hurdle for many users because they have to manually set up all the compilation/linting/testing/formatting etc infrastructure, each of which have multiple possible libraries, versions, and non-trivial configurations. You could spend a week configuring webpack alone to get code splitting, css compilation, etc to work. Projects like create-react-app and next.js have helped remove some of this fatigue, and you can see by their adoption just how much of an impact this has. Seems like Rome should be similarly beneficial without being inherently tied to an application framework like create-react-app or next.js – the challenge will be avoiding a confusing mess of 1000 configuration options to fine-tune each subsystem.

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#15

Post by capableweb » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

georgestephanis wrote: post #4

I mean, clarifying that it's in-progress is important. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day.

For more information about the name, the README elaborates:

> Rome gets its name from proverbs such as "All Roads Lead to Rome", "Rome wasn't built in a day" and "When in Rome, do as the Romans do". This refers to the expansive scope and the desire for conformity across the project. It started as a joke at the office.

https://github.com/facebookexperimental/rome#history

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#16

Post by capableweb » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #5

Maybe this is intuitive to JS devs, but what are the advantages of "zero third-party dependencies" and "being a comprehensive tool for the processing of anything JS related" or any of the other selling points of Rome? It seems like an impressive project, but it's not obvious to me what its actual benefits are.

This is all expanded on in the README:

> No external dependencies. This allows us to develop faster and provide a more cohesive experience by integrating internal libraries more tightly and sharing concepts and abstractions. There always exist opportunities to have a better experience by having something purpose-built.

See more of the technical reasons behind Rome here: https://github.com/facebookexperimental/rome#technical

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#17

Post by lxe » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #5

Maybe this is intuitive to JS devs, but what are the advantages of "zero third-party dependencies" and "being a comprehensive tool for the processing of anything JS related" or any of the other selling points of Rome? It seems like an impressive project, but it's not obvious to me what its actual benefits are.

Less dependencies = less layers of indirection and complexity making feature addition, iteration, testing, and debugging easier and much faster. If you need to change or tweak a function that a dependency usually covers, it's much easier to do if you're dealing with one single codebase (using same style, idioms, build structure, etc...). You don't have to worry about pinning or unpinning dependency versions and keeping track of their security issue, patches, and minor/major bumps.

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#18

Post by kkio » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

gear54rus wrote: post #11

throwaway894345 wrote: post #5

Maybe this is intuitive to JS devs, but what are the advantages of "zero third-party dependencies" and "being a comprehensive tool for the processing of anything JS related" or any of the other selling points of Rome? It seems like an impressive project, but it's not obvious to me what its actual benefits are.

It's not intuitive to me as a JS dev too... Are you guys gonna re-implement typescript for example? Where does 'no deps' line get drawn?

Echoing this sentiment. I think there's value in consolidating parts of the JS toolchain as there's a lot of variability there with how you can adjust your build system and pick your flavor of the week linter/formatter/bundler/etc. I'm not sure how 'no deps' is a a feature though, aside from (potentially) less packages to download during development.

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#19

Post by leetrout » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

I don't know if want this or if I really just want create-react-app for things that aren't react. A lot of tools do things Good Enough (which everyone disagrees on and will always fragment the ecosystem). But I do loathe setting up all the plumbing from scratch.

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#20

Post by W4ldi » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #13

It says "No Third Party Dependencies" but 95% of the code is written in TypeScript, so it isn't even JavaScript and the entire thing is built on top of one big dependency. Would not be a problem if it didn't sell itself as "zero third party dependencies" while being built on top of one that is not even JavaScript... Might as well built the tool in any other language that would have been better for the task.

typescript is just a language, how is that a dependency? by that logic, nothing is dependency free.