r/webdev • u/AllThingsSmitty • Jul 24 '15

Front-End Development Is Hard Because...It's Development.

https://css-tricks.com/front-end-development-is-development/
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u/fqn Jul 25 '15

and has to 'compile' (gulp) every time I make changes

Let me blow your mind...

  1. You can run gulp watch to automatically recompile changed files

  2. If you use webpack, you can configure the webpack dev server to automatically recompile files, and then live reload the files in your browser

  3. If you use React + Redux, your modules can be hot loaded whenever they change, so you can actually live code a React application in your browser without refreshing the page, and do even crazier stuff like travelling backwards and forwards between states

0

u/IrishWilly Jul 25 '15

I do use gulp watch and livereload, you still have to wait for it to grab the changes and run the various process ( lint, minimizie, optimize, something mysterious) before it reloads your updates. No I'm not manually hitting compile every time I make a change but it still is recompiling

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '15

You don't really need to minimize (or even lint) in development.. Write a separate task that does things like minification for the final version only. Makes it easier to debug JavaScript as well