Why Is the Front End Stack So Complicated?

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

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  • trunk

    Build, bundle & ship your Rust WASM application to the web.

  • I've been using Rust and WASM for my latest front-end project, and I think this setup is a viable alternative to commonly used JS frameworks for those willing to put in some effort to ramp up on new technology. Addressing the concerns from the article:

    "No universal import system" - Rust has it's own module system and Cargo is used for managing dependencies, no need to worry about different module systems.

    "Layers of minification, uglification, and transpilation." Just compile Rust to WASM file for the browser, same as using any other compile target.

    "Wildly different environments." Something that you'll still need to deal with. Some runtime dependencies are system-specific (code running on the browser usually needs access to Web APIs, and JavaScript, code running on the server can't access WebAPIs but can access the system clock and filesystem. Sometimes separate libraries or separate runtime configs are needed (e.g. configurable time source)

    "Overemphasis on file structure." Not a problem for imports, but you may still have file structure dependencies things like CSS, image resources etc.

    "Configuration hell." Pretty much non-existent once you have your Rust compiler setup locally.

    "Development parity." Just use trunk: https://trunkrs.dev/, to watch, build and serve, config is minimal.

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NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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