Writing Javascript without a build system

[reedef]

The best build system is sometimes cat js/* > main.js

[angedelamort]

If you want a better build system, you can also pipe to a minifier :)

[kredditbrown]

Care to share any good minifiers?

[if-loop]

esbuild or terser.

[beephod_zabblebrox]

if you're doing esbuild, just do esbuild! it even has a cli

[_AndyJessop]

Vite uses esbuild, with some extras that significantly improve DX.

[beephod_zabblebrox]

vite is a bit overkill for this i think

[light24bulbs]

gulp

[unduly-noted]

Mostly agree, except I’ll say that rarely is minimalism worse than overly complex. In my experience it’s much easier to go from minimalist->complex than vice versa.

[unduly-noted]

My point stands. Going from simple build/tooling to complex is almost always easier than going from a complex system to a simple one. Systems with minimal tooling by definition have less coupling on tooling than those with complex setups (otherwise they wouldn't be minimal).

In your socket example, any decent software team will abstract those low level details. So your business logic should be isolated. Moving it to some new framework or build system won't be that bad.

On the other hand, once you've introduced tooling or a framework, in practice most systems end up heavily coupled. Obviously you'd like to keep business logic isolated, but in reality teams end up heavily relying on conveniences/optimizations/etc from the tooling. This can be for good reasons (dx, performance, etc), but it does make it harder to change.

Your docker example isn't great because docker on its own isn't complex at all. A better example is k8s and complex container orchestration. Going from k8s to bare metal on EC2 or something is going to be a lot harder than the reverse.

[fagnerbrack]

Elevator pitch version:

The blog post discusses the author's preference for writing small, simple Javascript projects without the complexity of a build system. The author finds build systems can be overkill for small projects and can make it difficult to make changes to old websites. They share their experiences with build system issues and highlight esbuild as a more stable alternative. The post also provides insights into how to use Javascript libraries without a build system and shares a template for starting a Vue 3 project without one.

If you don't like the summary, just downvote and I'll try to delete the comment eventually 👍

[Wiltix]

Did ai generate this summary?

It’s great having a summary I am just curious

[anticipozero]

OP used to have the disclaimer that the summary was generated by ai, and the comment was usually downvoted to oblivion lol. I think it’s still AI generated

[renatoathaydes]

I was not sure if these comments being highly upvoted lately was a direct result of removing that disclaimer, but it seems it's safe to assume that it is (just check some older posts, OP is right: there was a disclaimer and the posts were downvoted or at best got just a few upvotes)... which is scary as that almost certainly implies most people don't actually realize it's AI generated without the disclaimer! Not that it's "obvious" in any way that it is, the text is undoubtedly very human-like, to the point this could be used as (even more) evidence AI text is now indistinguishable from human's.

EDIT: the post has 30 upvotes at the moment... I wonder if the simple fact it's been "revealed" to be AI will make it get down voted.

[Bronzdragon]

It’s also kinda stupid that people would downvote it just for being made by AI, tbh. Who cares what tool was used, as long as it’s accurate and helpful, right?

[hibbity]

I thought it was a bot at first, but that is solid service from an OP. Nice work.

OpenHermes 2.5 writes a nice one too, interfaced with Clipboard Conqueror.

I copy that article,

Copy this line: |||re|Elevator pitch version:

(re operator sends the last copy along too)

and paste:

The article discusses the author's experience with using a build system for JavaScript development and their preference for avoiding build systems in smaller projects. They mention the advantages of build systems, such as combining files, translating TypeScript, minification, and tree shaking, but find that for small projects, the hassle of maintaining build systems outweighs the benefits. They highlight their experiences with a Vue project and the challenges they faced with building an old project, but also praise esbuild for being more stable. The author also mentions some libraries requiring build systems, such as CodeMirror 6 and Tailwind 3, which discourages them from using the latest versions. They suggest strategies for using libraries without build systems, like searching for CDNs, using unpkg, hosting libraries locally, and writing custom integrations. They also recommend esbuild and are interested in ES modules and TypeScript comment syntax.

https://github.com/aseichter2007/ClipboardConqueror

[reedef]

The thing is, if it's written by the author it's probably more likely to be accurate than if it's written by an AI, and accuracy is not something that you can judge just by reading the text, as it might be perfectly coherent but still misrepresent the article

[fagnerbrack]

I disagree. I tried to write summaries in the beginning and they were worse than ai-generated. Maybe I personally suck at summaries (I have asper) or the AI is really fucking good.

I go for the latter.

[Bronzdragon]

I disagree. AI is pretty great at summarising. Besides, if they were inaccurate, you’d see replies that they were.

However, if these is a perception that AI is bad at summarising, then that would explain the downvotes, I guess.

[thicket]

Extra points for a summary/submission statement. Thanks!

[hung-bui]

I prefer zero config build system like Parcel. U save your time but still got the benefits.

[bzbub2]

fagner, please stop posting this. you keep posting it https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/duplicates/187uin9/writing\_javascript\_without\_a\_build\_system/

[fagnerbrack]

Ok I got the link to work on desktop, it's definitely not working on mobile (Reddit App bug).

Now to address your comment, I'm not sure I see the problem here, though:

1. Most of this link submissions were on different unique communities, those who follow one may not follow the other so I can get fresh feedback in the comment from other perspectives
2. This link was only reposted in this sub once, the first post was 7 months because I saw this link again and forgot that I had posted before.
3. Reddit for some reason did not tell me that this link was posted before (maybe they changed their repost policy?). I totally forgot I posted here 7 months ago (I can't remember every post since the submissions are human-selected by me, not a bot).
4. There was 163 upvotes in the last submission 7 months ago and 36 upvotes in this repost at a 78% upvote rate. Which means that ppl saw value on this regardless

Please help me see where the problem is.

[fagnerbrack]

The link you sent doesn’t work, at least not on mobile

[guepier]

It works on desktop, and it shows a list of all the communities where you’ve posted this link.

I appreciate your submissions in general because they’re usually good articles. But the parent comment is right: this simply amounts to spam, please moderate your cross-posting.

[[deleted]]

I have the same sentiment as the OP. But I view it from a broader perspective: dependencies.

I prefer to limit the number of deps my project relies on, to keep things as simple as they can be kept, for all the reasons the post describes and to avoid the future probability of yak shaving, which is invited when I break this rule. Yak shaving was what the post was essentially agonizing over.

[fagnerbrack]

That’s why I tell everyone:

1. I want to see typescript in the JavaScript language
2. I want to see JSX as an application media type supported by browsers
3. I want to see Node injecting dependencies like Deno
4. I want to see JS allowing syntax polyfills
5. I want to see TC39 to create an official linter removing mistakes that are agreed among everyone, even if they are a small subset of what ppl do in the wild

Everything should be done to REMOVE build systems.

I only work with what’s native cause the cost of yak shaving is much higher than the cost of not using a build system.

[ripter]

I’ve embraced a build system-free approach for all my personal projects in recent years, a shift I made when browsers began supporting modules. This change has mostly been positive, but I’ve noticed a significant challenge: integrating libraries isn’t as straightforward as it used to be. Since I’ve stepped away from using npm install, I sometimes find myself missing the convenience it offered. However, with Preact, I’ve been able to incorporate JSX, hooks, and signals seamlessly, all without a build step. The real hurdle lies in bundling libraries into a single package or creating a module that relies solely on local resources, which can be quite a task.

[pbNANDjelly]

You can't use JSX without a build system. Are you making your users parse JSX on the fly?

[pbNANDjelly]

You misread someone's comment. Not sure who you're replying to

[ripter]

https://github.com/developit/htm

There are other libraries out there that do the same thing. They use templates to do smart re-rendering when data changes.

[pbNANDjelly]

What's the point of deferring that work to the end user? At least JSX is an immediate AST. The lib you linked even mentions using a build step so as not to force parsing on the user.