> JS is supposed to be a productivity gain over compiled languages. But with ultra slow builds that goes out of the window.
But what business problem are we solving? Why do we need compiles, transpiles and so, in a dynamic language in the first place¹? And if so, is compiling the right solution to that problem?
My point was mostly to question if we are solving the right problem. And if the direction in which we are solving it, is the right one. After some 20+ years we still haven't converged around a single solution. But instead we keep firing out "new" solutions and solutions to the problems that those solutions then introduce on an almost weekly basis.
To me that shows we are either simply looking in the wrong place, or have a much deeper, fundamental problem that simply cannot be solved. And should probably either stop looking for the solution or just abandon the whole stack.
¹ I'm not looking for an answer to this question. I know several reasons why we build, compile, transpile, minify and whatnot in JS. But all those are also solutions to deeper problems. Problem's that can be solved in several ways, only one of which is "compile pipelines".
Vite wrapps esbuild. Not sure what it provides itself.
Then there came several specialized (Rust) tools. For the same reason esbuild was made.
I think ultimately they try to solve the same issue:
JS is supposed to be a productivity gain over compiled languages. But with ultra slow builds that goes out of the window.