Something that’s come up recently in the front-end world is the topic of a learning curve and JavaScript tooling such and Webpack and Babel. While I agree that new tooling can sometimes be a pain to learn, since when did being a web developer/programmer/rockstar not require learning new things? I mean, learning the CLI is one thing, but it’s not suuuuper difficult and is definitely a skill that will serve you well in your career. On top of that, front-end build tooling has been around for a while, first with Grunt and then Gulp. Does Webpack make things that much more difficult?

The argument I’m making is partially around React and how Webpack (or similar) is required. To me, this doesn’t seem like a problem, as many languages require compilation during a build step. I see the build step and associated tooling a good thing, as it allows for more streamlined and complex programming concepts to be brought into front-end development.

If you’re worried about learning something like the Webpack build process, Create React App has got all the setup jank covered. In Vue, there’s vue-cli which similarly gets you set up. In both cases all it takes to get up and running is npm install then npm start. That’s not too bad!

I guess what I’m saying, if all this ‘new’ stuff bothers you as a developer, it might be time to 1.) upgrade your skills, or 2.) do something else. Things aren’t slowing down any time soon in the front-end landscape, better get on the wagon or jump off!