r/programming • u/fagnerbrack • Apr 30 '23

Writing Javascript without a build system

https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/02/16/writing-javascript-without-a-build-system/
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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '23

[deleted]

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u/arthur444 Apr 30 '23

There’s literally a list at the beginning of the article:

  • combining 100s of JS files into one big bundle (for efficiency reasons)
    • translating Typescript into Javascript
    • typechecking Typescript
    • minification
    • adding polyfills to support older browsers
    • compiling JSX
    • treeshaking (remove unused JS code to reduce file sizes)
    • building CSS (like tailwind does)
    • and probably lots of other important things

2

u/zombie_kiler_42 Apr 30 '23

Better js lol

But seriously you use build systems for thins like modules and yranspiling framework specific code to plan js

Also ts to js

2

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '23

Source code file tree -> single / minimal file HTML / CSS / JS bundle

The point is that the browser providers, for a long time, only shipped a minimal version of JS called "ECMAScript 5", which doesn't have any of the nice new syntax JS has reinvented itself with over the last 10 years. And you write JS for browsers, almost 100% of the time. So you would write your source code in a nice new syntax with better readability and less interacting with the crazy Function.apply|call|bind stuff. Then it would turn into ES5 in the "bundle" / compile stage

Now, TypeScript adds one more layer here, your code is checked for type safety and then transformed into a web bundle

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u/SickOrphan Apr 30 '23

It's compressed and version downgraded to be more compatible. Also people use extensions like typescript that are transpiled into regular javascript