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Comment by caseymarquis | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it's just me, but I didn't find it all that difficult to get started with webpack after a few tutorials and samples. This seems like it hides away something that people should probably understand, which isn't all that difficult to get started with. Also when you start combining different packages in webpack (or encounter an error (or want to make some decisions in the config script)), the standard copy/paste boiler plate becomes less and less useful.

This looks neat, I just don't think it's likely to do away with configuration completely unless you've got a very standard setup.

That aside, it sort of sounds like the goal here is "a sort of package manager which also handles boilerplate"? Definitely sounds useful when you want to quickly try something new.

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I personally find Webpack (and the documentation) to be a little maddening once you want to go beyond standard presets. Why doesn't this file have sourcemaps? Why do some Webpack plugins output the name of the entry point while others output the name of the source file? Why is this file being emitted in the wrong place? There are definitely benefits to using Webpack, but it's a lot harder to debug than a bunch of Makefiles and UNIX pipes.

We all do basically the same thing in every app ever, it's the fragmentation that is such a huge pain with JavaScript. Most apps don't have to be unique snowflakes, we make them that way with hacky css-in-js and so on.

Webpack is great for what it is, but I strongly disagree that people should have to understand the config boilerplate aspect to get something functioning. All it does is prevent you from doing real work, not to mention if you're working on dozens of apps, this quickly becomes a hellish thing to deal with.

I have great respect for you but this seems a bit mean spirited. Why shouldn't devs want to be as many things as possible?

Is css-in-js is more ridiculous than regular CSS? I've left regular CSS behind and gained a lot of sanity.

It's just my opinion of course :) but I think css-in-js is a step backwards in the majority of cases. I do like CSS modules in terms of scoping / modularity, but I don't want to replace CSS with (what I consider to be) really gross JS implementations.

I don't want to discourage people trying new things, but I also don't want people to waste thousands of collective hours dealing with crazy configuration.

I think toying around with those things are fun for people who get paid by startups etc, but for those of us who simply want to get things done, the ecosystem is not enjoyable.

I think you are conflating multiple things. There's several JS styling libraries have literally zero configuration (and don't involve build tooling, etc). They "just work" out of the box.

It's just you. No one actually likes fighting against webpack so that they can concatenate JavaScript files in the correct order.

Can you explain that experience more? Are you not using any sort of module system?

If you're simply concatenating files together, Webpack is decidedly the wrong tool. The magic that Webpack does is understand what you're require()ing and automagically just make a bundle for you. Point it at your project root, and you get a bundle.

I didn't find it all that difficult to get started with webpack after a few tutorials and samples

Neither did I until one day I tried to do something slightly outside those tutorials and the whole thing kind of stopped working for reasons I could never fully understand.

That being said I'm still using webpack, but it's not really an enjoyable experience.

And this is why I have stuck to using grunt like a neanderthal. Grunt is primitive and slow but I understand everything that it does and I am able to extend it to do my bidding. Webpack etc. are probably more efficient but also limiting.

This was my biggest complaint with the Angular 2 cli generated app. I had to dig to even find out they were using webpack behind the scenes. And I know they just want to utilize it without troubling newbies, but I wish they had some means of customizing it. I think it's on their roadmap, or just being requested a lot on github. There's so much you can do with webpack that it's a shame it's hidden.

The inability to customize webpack was sometimes a pain point for me. There were a few things I wanted to do that would have been much easier if I could just play around with it. Fortunately, they've added the ability to get yourself a webpack config!

https://github.com/angular/angular-cli/commit/7ac0d05

http://www.dzurico.com/angular-cli-with-the-super-powers/

Nice! I was hoping someone would respond to me to tell me how they finally had a way to do this.

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