create-react-app-zero VS mu1

https://github.com/jsebrech/create-react-app-zero

No build frontend dev is a thing, although obscure.

Preact has a no build path in their documentation: https://preactjs.com/guide/v10/getting-started/#no-build-too...

And here’s my no build react setup: https://github.com/jsebrech/create-react-app-zero

Not really the thing you’re looking for, but for those looking for a toolless approach static web apps are a possibility. Host a folder on github pages, put an index.html file in there, start coding.

Plugging my own repo: https://github.com/jsebrech/create-react-app-zero

It is a version of create react app that works in that way, no build tools needed, only a static web server for local development.

For example, I made a version of create react app that requires zero build tools and IMHO doesn't concede too much in developer experience. To be fair, I am not using this myself professionally, but as a proof of concept I think it's pretty interesting to see what's possible. https://github.com/jsebrech/create-react-app-zero

I have been in professional web development since 2004 and I mostly agree with the author that there are massive amounts of groupthink going on. "Modern" web development has standardized in tool stacks which are insanely complicated, far beyond anything that is warranted in most cases. We have forgotten how to make simple things in simple ways.

At a minimum you need node, npm, webpack, babel, an spa framework, a frontend router, a css transpiler, a css framework, a test runner, a testing functions library, and a bunch of smaller things, and that's just what is "needed" to build a static website with a bit of interaction. We're not even talking about the dockerized insanity that happens as soon as you want to slide an API under that beast.

I understand why every piece is there, I was there when they arrived on the scene, I understand what problem they solve. What I don't understand is why as a group web developers have decided this is the only way to solve the problem of web development. What we don't have are simpler web stacks. Why do we need npm or babel at all to make a simple web frontend? Modern browsers are good enough that with the right tooling we don't need build pipelines or package managers. Similar arguments can be made for the server-side parts.

Anyway, here's my own two cents to a simpler web dev stack: a version of create react app that is entirely self-contained and has no build steps. https://github.com/jsebrech/create-react-app-zero

I got sick of juggling code that migrated from one category to the other, so I wrote a little script that deals with chopping up a large source file into multiple TUs before feeding them to the compiler.

https://github.com/akkartik/mu1/blob/master/build2

More details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33574154#33575045

This really speaks to me. Modern software is too hard to assemble from source. If you're shipping sources, every moving part you add increases the odds of something going wrong on other people's computers.

It's worth having some skepticism of tools. By making some operations easy, tools encourage them. Build systems make it easy to bloat software. Package managers make it easy to bloat dependencies. This dynamic explains why Python in particular has such a terrible package management story. It's been around longer than Node or Rust, so if they seem better -- wait 10 years!

For many of my side projects I try to minimize moving parts for anyone (usually the '1' is literally true) who tries them out. I work in Unix, and one thing I built is a portable shell script that acts like a build system while being much more transparent about what it does: https://codeberg.org/akkartik/basic-build

When I use this script my build instructions are more verbose, but I think that's a good thing. They're more explicit for newcomers, and they also impose costs that nudge me to keep my programs minimalist.

You can see this build system evolve to add partial builds and parallel builds in one of my projects:

https://github.com/akkartik/mu1/blob/master/build0

https://github.com/akkartik/mu1/blob/master/build1

https://github.com/akkartik/mu1/blob/master/build2

https://github.com/akkartik/mu1/blob/master/build3

https://github.com/akkartik/mu1/blob/master/build4

Each of these does the same thing for this one repo -- build it -- but adding successively more bells and whistles.

I think providing just the most advanced version, build4, would do my users a disservice. It's also the most likely to break, where build0 is rock solid. If my builds do break for someone, they can poke around and downgrade to a simpler version.

Totally agreed!

Here's a prototype from a few years ago where I tried to make this easier: https://github.com/akkartik/mu1#readme (read just the first few paragraphs)

I still think the full answer lies in this direction.