Link tags: transpilers

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htmx ~ Why htmx Does Not Have a Build Step

The best reason to write a library in plain JavaScript is that it lasts forever. This is arguably JavaScript’s single most underrated feature. While I’m sure there are some corner cases, JavaScript from 1999 that ran in Netscape Navigator will run unaltered, alongside modern code, in Google Chrome downloaded yesterday. That is true for very few programming environments.

And yet:

Of course, most people’s experience with JavaScript is that it ages like milk. Reopen a node repository after 3 months and you’ll find that your project is mired in a flurry of security warnings, backwards-incompatible library “upgrades,” and a frontend framework whose cultural peak was the exact moment you started the project and is now widely considered tech debt.

Compilers are the New Frameworks - tomdale.net

If you’re interested in predicting the future of the web, just look at what high-performance native systems look like, then figure out how we can apply those ideas in the browser.

I like that Tom encourages learning from native, but not at the expense of the web (hint, hint, Google devrels encouraging slavish imitation of native apps in progressive web apps with no regard for URLs).

Our job now is figuring out how to adapt the ideas of high-performance native code while preserving what makes the web great: URLs, instant loading, and a security model that allows us to forget that we run thousands and thousands of untrusted scripts every day.