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Comment by lbotos | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a perfect example of why in 2014 Javascript is harder than ever for someone to learn. I'd love to get your take as someone who seems to be using the latest cool stuff as to how to mitigate that?

I personally learned JS circa 2006 in the jQuery era and now I'm in a position where web-minded individuals ask me how to learn JS but they are "10 steps ahead" asking questions like react vs ember, ember vs angular, etc. Thoughts? Do they basically have to learn up the chain? I guess what I'm saying is there is a lot of history that I'm not sure can be skipped?

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You can skip. I get that front end stuff can be intimidating. My recommendation is to learn the basics and when it comes to libraries fight the intimidation and take a few minutes to try out new technology when you encounter it. If you find it too hard in those few minutes of actually trying it, don't use it. You can still use script tags if you want. Your site will run just fine. Do what feels comfortable. These tools are supposed to make your life easier, not harder.

Having said that grunt is very bad because it is intimidating even for seasoned front-end programmers, it probably scared a lot of new developers away from even looking at front-end build systems. That's probably a good reason why it should fall off the radar. Thankfully gulp is much easier and I bet if you try it you will find it useful. If you don't, that's OK.

I practically live and die by the 5 Minute Rule, and as a counterpoint, I've always found Grunt intuitive, if verbose. In particular, I love that its files API is so flexible. I frequently find myself asking questions that look like "I wonder if I can do this X way", and things just work.

Saying Grunt is "very bad" is harsh and only serves to amplify hyperbole that causes much of the churn around JS tooling.

[edited for a grammar nitpick]

> Saying Grunt is "very bad" is harsh and only serves to amplify hyperbole that causes much of the churn around JS tooling.

I'm speaking from personal experience and time lost trying to just get things to work so I can focus on building the application, not making a hobby out of building the frontend tooling. What I said may be harsh, but it's the truth. Have you tried gulp?

I have, and I'd even be up for using it on a production project. I'd go so far to say I like it even. But the fact stands that the current project I'm working on has a Gruntfile that just flat out wouldn't work in Gulp - which is a combination of things that I'm doing that don't have an analogue in Grunt, likely mixed with a few that I simply wasn't able to figure out.

If Grunt makes sense on some projects, and Gulp makes sense for others, why the need for all the value judgements? I still stand by the assertion that such claims add nothing to the conversation and muddy the waters for everyone.

Personally, for the time being I skip all the build tools and just dump JS files in a folder manually. Maybe once I am up to scratch with all the other JS stuff, I'll take a look at the build tools again.

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