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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

#41

Post by emilis_info »

chubot wrote: post #28
emilis_info wrote: post #21

And just like that I have one more reason to ignore them both and use Make. Speed? Check. Simpler syntax? Check. No need to "fix" code that isn't broken? Check. No need to waste my attention on every new fad? Check.

Why even use Make? I just use shell scripts for automation. The only case where you really need the incremental behavior of Make is C/C++ builds (and arguably it's increasingly inappropriate for this domain as well). For all other kinds of automation I just use shell scripts, since Make is mostly a horribly reinvented shell script dialect.

You can pack several shell scripts into one Makefile as .PHONY targets. You can share configuration values, subtasks between the tasks. It is somewhat easier to supply options to tasks e.g.:

    make deploy SERVER=example.com
Shell syntax is horrible itself. Make doesn't add too much on top of that.

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

#42

Post by Raphael »

AndyKelley wrote: post #26

I like to set up my node apps such that no matter what the build setup is, no matter what the dependencies are, you can execute `npm run dev` to get started. Inside package.json, this will look something like: scripts: { "dev": "npm install && make && node lib/server.js" } The cool part about putting this in package.json is that it will install first so you get all the dependencies and devDependencies, and then npm s…

Clever setup.

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

#43

Post by shadowmint »

emilis_info wrote: post #25
jonursenbach wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not there are people in the world who aren't technical enough to use stuff like Make, and are perfectly fine with using tools like Grunt or Gulp to get them through their days. Mindblowing, I know.

Believe it or not there are people in the world who aren't technical enough to use Grunt or Gulp, because they are much more complicated than Make... Mindblowing, I know.

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 parsing the output for errors and displaying them nicely, then watching the filesystem for changes and recompiling on demand).

It's not because make is evil, it's because make does a poor job of some of these sorts of tasks.

...if all you're doing is turning .coffee files into .js, it's file, but it's not a solution for complex website builds.

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

#44

Post by pedalpete »

pfrrp wrote: post #20

Skip the require vs browserify debate and use https://github.com/webpack/webpack . Allows for amd commonjs and almost any other format around. With gulp and grunt plugins!

I've been messing around with require.js and browserify all day, but I don't really LOVE either solution for a large angular app. I'm going to give webpack a try. Thanks

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

#45

Post by takatin »

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…

(front-end dev)

Couple years ago when Google+ was the new kid on the block, I made a tiny userscript that hooked into their DOM and cleaned the UI up a bit. You'd think this was an easy task and you'd be right except it was quite a pain in the rear to maintain the extension. Google kept changing the classes and IDs, and moved the DOM around so frequently (sometimes within hours of the previous change) that my extension was constantly broken, and all my time was spent tweaking my code to keep pace with the changes propagating from an entire team of Googlers and their automated commit bots. It wasn't long before I gave up on the effort.

Following front-end trends today feels exactly like that experience; there's a whole host of prolific authors, even teams, coming up with new approaches for almost every nut and bolt in the stack. I think for the time-constrained it's best to wait for the wheat to rise above the chaff, even it means falling behind the curve a bit.

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

#46

Post by TheZenPsycho »

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…

It's all just marginal convergence towards "best", and in real practice, most of this "progress" can and should be ignored. For every tool, wait it out until it's been around and still in active use/development/maintenance for at least 5 full years.

But always stay playing. Always try out the new things, because some of them may just scratch a burning itch.

Fear not age, because if you've been around long enough, and are still actively learning, all this new stuff starts looking very much like mere variations of old things.

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

#47

Post by [deleted] »

STRML wrote: post #18
argonaut wrote: post #6

I wouldn't say that. RequireJS vs. Browserify is still a very contentious issue that is up to a developer's preferences.

Is it really, though? Aside from RequireJS's subjectively awful syntax (I have built a few non-trivial applications with it, and find it generally very noisy) - it simply does not do many of the very useful things that Browserify does. Browserify is much more than just a simple dependency management toolkit, it allows you to easily write node-style code and use npm dependencies in the browser. It's practically apples…

[deleted]

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

#48

Post by wowfat »

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…

Interesting question, I feel that if you are good in a particular area (Say php / css / js / html) then you will find each new component / framework actually simplifies your life or makes it easier. The trouble is if you are more of a heavy js developer and are typically labelled as a web developer. Then you feel like you have to know about SASS (css) / HTML5 video standard / Scala and everything else related to the web field!

I think that as web development grows and matures, it will finally have multiple experts who need to work together and with each expert having no problem in catching up or using the latest paradigm in their area.

I would recommend you specialize / try and learn whatever you are good at.

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

#49

Post by ufo »

oinksoft wrote: post #36
chubot wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why even use Make? I just use shell scripts for automation. The only case where you really need the incremental behavior of Make is C/C++ builds (and arguably it's increasingly inappropriate for this domain as well). For all other kinds of automation I just use shell scripts, since Make is mostly a horribly reinvented shell script dialect.

Make is the easiest way to map all .foo input files to .bar output files and have the outputs only rebuild when the inputs change. This has a ton of applications outside of C and C++, really anything where the build takes time. A shell script cannot adequately express task dependencies, or one that did would become a build tool like make. As it stands, make has a very simple and light syntax for expressing dependenci…

Not writing task dependencies is kind of a feature though, in a KISS way. One of the reasons I have been tending towards using stupid shell scripts is that its much easier to guarantee that everything is built correctly if you rebuild from scratch everytime. With make I often find myself dealing with bugs in the makefile due to forgetting to specify some dependency or things like that.

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

#50

Post by jondot »

And again I'll remind people what happened in Java land:

ANT -> Ivy/Maven -> Gradle

I'll state it clearly: Grunt. is. Ant. It's a mess to follow a build script and a ritual to make it work in a real life project.

I expected a tool like gulp to come sweeping in and it did, I'm extremely happy about that and started migrating away from the horrible tooling that is Grunt.

I never understood how people can tolerate Grunt. Long live gulp and common sense!.

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