40 Reasons Why…
This is the era of JavaScript fatigue. JavaScript innovation and fragmentation has become so persistent that it’s hard to know where to begin when starting a new project. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
What if your team had a rich, rapid feedback development environment?What if each time you started a new JavaScript project, you got bundling, transpiling, automated testing, minification, cache busting, continuous integration and more for free?
Starting from scratch is no longer practical. There are too many best practices for any individual to track. The era of starter kits is here.
I just spent the last year exploring this topic in detail. My investigation culminated in a comprehensive new course that dives deep into how your team can create a rich JavaScript development environment from scratch.
You Need a Starter Kit
Why is this so important? Because the number of decisions JavaScript developers have to consider today is overwhelming:
That’s over 40 decisions. I couldn’t fit them all on a single Powerpoint slide. This list is so long that most teams overlook dozens of important concerns. I’m consulting front-end developers all over the world and see a common theme: Automated testing is extremely rare. As is minification, cache busting, bundle splitting, linting and more.
Here’s why:
JavaScript developers are so overwhelmed that they’re ignoring huge opportunities to improve quality, enhance performance, and automate away pain.
All too often, developers are choosing the path of least resistance. This means most of the concerns above are ignored.
It’s a classic problem: Cutting corners in the short-term slows us down in the long-term.
The Solution
The first step toward a solution is simple: Schedule a team meeting with a simple agenda:
- What are our JS pain points?
- Would we benefit from a JS starter kit?
- Would we benefit from a demo app?
Answer these questions, and you’ll have a clear direction for creating your own JavaScript starter kit. Sure, there are countless boilerplates, generators, starter kits on the web. Those are a great start.
But in reality, each team has unique needs and opinions, so most teams benefit greatly from creating their own starter kit. By all means, explore a few boilerplates that are popular for your library or framework of choice. But I suggest starting from scratch, using your favorites as inspiration. This assures you understand how it all works.
I walk through the long list of options and build a robust JavaScript development from scratch in “Building a JavaScript Development Environment” on Pluralsight. This course is a playbook of 40+ decisions you need to consider when building your own environment.
Inspired? I’d love to see what you build!
Cory House is the author of many courses on JavaScript, clean coding, architecture and more on Pluralsight. Cory is principal consultant at reactjsconsulting.com, a software Architect at VinSolutions, a Microsoft MVP, and trains software developers internationally on software practices like front-end development and clean coding.