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Zwitterion: a web dev server that lets you import anything

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Re: Zwitterion: a web dev server that lets you import anything

#51

Post by gherkinnn »

tl wrote: post #45
gherkinnn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience that results in the team building an inferior, untested, undocumented, and buggy version of React|Vue|jQuery|lodash. Now you need to train new peeps to handle that mess. And you haven’t even started solving actual problems. Provided you really need so much bulk at your disposal. But that’s a different story.

My experiences with React / Vue / Angular: server side rendering plus a reasonable refresh interface (LiveView, PJAX, Turbolinks, etc...) wins until you reach the point where native code is a better solution anyway. JQuery / lodash: we’re slowly getting better about modern browser availability and needing these less, but it’s a long road.

Despite working mainly with TS and React, I almost agree with the first part. There are all to many cases where a minimal setup works just fine. My hope is that such a restrained setup inherently suppresses stupid features nobody asked for. And yet here we are.

Re: Zwitterion: a web dev server that lets you import anything

#52

Post by tyingq »

andybak wrote: post #12

Can anyone point me to a workflow where the cognitive load is similar to how it was in the good old days? i.e. some thing that does everything for me apart from the bit where I write application and presentation code? That mostly just works and doesn't require me to understand the whole stack. Because when I switch to other languages/environments I can most remain blissfully unaware of the plumbing that keeps the thi…

Svelte was mentioned here yesterday. It's not like the old jQuery days, but it did look simplified to me as compared to other popular toolsets.

https://svelte.dev/

Some examples: https://svelte.dev/examples

Re: Zwitterion: a web dev server that lets you import anything

#53

Post by bauerd »

mumphster wrote: post #32
andybak wrote: post #12

Can anyone point me to a workflow where the cognitive load is similar to how it was in the good old days? i.e. some thing that does everything for me apart from the bit where I write application and presentation code? That mostly just works and doesn't require me to understand the whole stack. Because when I switch to other languages/environments I can most remain blissfully unaware of the plumbing that keeps the thi…

Parcel ( https://parceljs.org/ ) fits this bill nicely and I use it for all my personal frontend development needs (node and browser targeted). You just add a script tag that points to a js/typescript/rust/(whatever else the author eventually adds) file and run parcel on said html file and you get hot reloading, decent error reporting, bundling, and asset loading via `import` without having to configure a single thin…

Yep, tried this recently after being out of JS land for a while, and Parcel just worked. So +1

Re: Zwitterion: a web dev server that lets you import anything

#54

Post by reaperducer »

"Zwitterion lets you get back to the good old days of web development."

I'm OK with people pining for simpler times. There's a lot of projects that are overcomplicated these days. But the good old days of web development didn't require three files for "Hello, World."

Re: Zwitterion: a web dev server that lets you import anything

#55

Post by Etheryte »

A couple of meta suggestions:

The submission title is provocative and personally I'd say misleading. As can be seen in other comments, it can lead to badly framed discussions and general dislike about the project. The project readme doesn't even mention Webpack, so why is the leading phrase "Webpack killer" in the title?

The repository readme is very long. As a dev, I'm looking to capture the core concepts of a project from the readme: what is this thing, is it relevant to me, and how does it compare to other things? Most of this information is covered, but there's a lot in addition. I'd recommend moving everything about specific languages to separate files and simply reference those in a list.

Re: Zwitterion: a web dev server that lets you import anything

#57

Post by tghw »

mumphster wrote: post #32
andybak wrote: post #12

Can anyone point me to a workflow where the cognitive load is similar to how it was in the good old days? i.e. some thing that does everything for me apart from the bit where I write application and presentation code? That mostly just works and doesn't require me to understand the whole stack. Because when I switch to other languages/environments I can most remain blissfully unaware of the plumbing that keeps the thi…

Parcel ( https://parceljs.org/ ) fits this bill nicely and I use it for all my personal frontend development needs (node and browser targeted). You just add a script tag that points to a js/typescript/rust/(whatever else the author eventually adds) file and run parcel on said html file and you get hot reloading, decent error reporting, bundling, and asset loading via `import` without having to configure a single thin…

It's also significantly faster the webpack, at least in my experience.

Re: Zwitterion: a web dev server that lets you import anything

#58

Post by chrshawkes »

scient wrote: post #36
hising wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome with new ideas and approaches to things. Just because someone have taken time to solve things differently does not automagically imply that this is something that forces someone to throw old stuff out. Strange comment IMO.

I think he is pretty spot on. JS community is infamous for the constant replacement of tools with the next shiny thing, which are all built on a house of cards (one-line npm packages). I would rather see some more serious tools being put out and matured instead of this constant running around. My own personal theory is that because the barrier of entry is so low, people get a little too excited about being a contribu…

Correct. In no way is this tool a webpack killer. Webpack solves a lot of problems that clearly this author of this post is not familiar with based on the clickbaity title.

Re: Zwitterion: a web dev server that lets you import anything

#59

Post by nicoburns »

gherkinnn wrote: post #49
christophilus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been doing React for years and haven’t experienced this. What kinds of apps are you building?

React Router used to be a mess. And should I use Redux? I thought it’s not cool anymore. If I do, do I store everything in a global state? Maybe I’ll use Context and Hooks. Or was it HoCs? And what about mobX? I heard it’s like Vue. I like Vue. And I absolutely need something to handle requests. Saga? Maybe some GraphQL? Now that I have my views, my state, and my data, how do I test this? Jest or something else? But…

Everyone worries about these choices in react, but you don't need to, for most apps, they're all good choices: use redux or mobx, doesn't really matter. Use lodash or underscore, doesn't really matter.

There are minor advantages to some of the tools, and the nice thing about the react ecosystem is that it lets you pick if you really need to, but for getting started, just pick one and move on.

IMO this is highly preferrable to the angular world, where some things just can't done without digging through poorly documented internals (at least this was the case wirh v4 when I last used it)

Re: Zwitterion: a web dev server that lets you import anything

#60

Post by z3t4 »

gherkinnn wrote: post #28
Filligree wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vanilla JS? For most purposes I find that all these frameworks are simply unnecessary . As a bonus, all the debugging tools in Chrome work much better when there's no obfuscation or packing, and "recompiling" is just Ctrl-R. Code size and load speed is also massively better than it would otherwise be. Pages load instantly. It's nirvana, I tell you.

In my experience that results in the team building an inferior, untested, undocumented, and buggy version of React|Vue|jQuery|lodash. Now you need to train new peeps to handle that mess. And you haven’t even started solving actual problems. Provided you really need so much bulk at your disposal. But that’s a different story.

Frameworks are managers pipe dream. Vanilla never gets old.
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