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Comment by joshe | Hacker News Reader

Can someone explain or point to something about what vite is?

Is this very niche or something every web developer should be interested in?

Tried this https://vitejs.dev/guide/why.html, and the comparisons page and it's all buzzwords.

"Vite aims to address these issues by leveraging new advancements in the ecosystem: the availability of native ES modules in the browser, and the rise of JavaScript tools written in compile-to-native languages."

Corp PR speak is not the pinnacle, there is no reason to emulate it. To "Address" a problem means you haven't solved it. "Leveraging" just means "using".

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Vite is something every web dev should be interested in.

Say you want to create a new React frontend? Should you make directories, package.json, wire up the .html to ReactDOM, and all the other little things? Most likely not. Just 'npm create vite' and select React.

It can be used for other JS like Vue, Svelte, and Preact.

For example, if you wanted to quickly make a UI, you don't need to fiddle with webpack and other crazy build steps. This guy had just run 'npm create vite && npm install && npm run dev' and starts creating UI right away: https://youtu.be/A0BmLYHLPZs?t=68

Think "webpack + webpack dev server" but better.

Vite aims to provide a excellent dev build & HMR experience and use it's build config to generate prod bundles.

Yes, every web developer should care about frontend build tools. Those who don't use Vite, Webpack, or similar tools ends up with multi megabyte websites that are a mess.

It's a build tool that converts your JS authoring environment into code your browser will understand.

The tl;dr is webpack but better.

I'll admit I was cynical too, reinventing front-end build tools is the current day reinventing front-end frameworks, but after using it, it really is a hell of a lot better and easier to manage than webpack hell, I'd give it a try if it's the sort of thing that interests you.

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