Re:Ask HN: Has web development really become easier than 10 ...
by onion2k on Sunday November 05, 2017 @12:28PM
(#15630441)
...without really adding value
My go-to example of why build tools are essential is subresource integrity hashing. If adding a hash was a manual process every time you had to deploy a new version of a site then no developer would bother, and the user's security would suffer for it. With Webpack (or any of its peers) it's a matter of installing an NPM module and adding it to the plugins configuration. That's it. That's a huge amount of value for practically no effort. Writing new plugins is hard, but few developers ever need to do that.
I spent 3 days learning the basics of Webpack and I've never looked back. It's a fantastic tool that any modern web developer ought to know.
My go-to example of why build tools are essential is subresource integrity hashing. If adding a hash was a manual process every time you had to deploy a new version of a site then no developer would bother, and the user's security would suffer for it. With Webpack (or any of its peers) it's a matter of installing an NPM module and adding it to the plugins configuration. That's it. That's a huge amount of value for practically no effort. Writing new plugins is hard, but few developers ever need to do that.
I spent 3 days learning the basics of Webpack and I've never looked back. It's a fantastic tool that any modern web developer ought to know.