For Stingray, we were building and editor using web technologies in a desktop environment. Since our development tech stack was complicated enough (js, ts, lua, C#, C++, CMake, ruby) we tried to have the simplest front end setup as possible. We were not using babel. Or a bundler (webpack, rollup). We used plain javascript, requirejs and that was it.

Then we added typescript to the mix. And we tried to have the simplest environment possible as well: we only relied on the typescript compiler to transpile our code. I even wrote a TypeScript Projects Watcher that could watch multiple ts projects at the same time and keep compilation up to date.

Web framework fatigue

This was all well and good since we had full control on our environement. Stingray was a closed box. Now if you are publishing any serious library on npm for others to use this is where the javascript fatigue will hit you hard. There are TONS (metric) of frameworks to properly setup a build environment. Do you want continous integration? Tests? Bundling? Doc generation? Automatic publishing? There are multiple frameworks for each of these tasks. Which to use? Which to pick?

two nerds try to configure babel pic.twitter.com/1jZ026YOKb

— I Am Devloper (@iamdevloper) October 18, 2017

Code not setup

I hate setupping new projects with a passion. What I like is to code. To produce something new. Not reading docs about yml config file (I am looking at you Travis). I have a github boilerplate to setup new typescript project. It is crazy simple. But it doesn’t support much. But at least I understand all the ramifications of all the tech that is used :)

Boilerplate to the rescue

Over the past few years, I noticed a proliferation of “boilerplate” projects to start any kind of web development. There is even a tool: Yeoman whose sole goal is to help you setup any kind of webapp (over 5600 different types!).

I am currently working on my own web UI library. Everyone needs his own UI library! It is kind of a rite of passage. Now that I want to put it out on npm I need to find a proper way to package it. And this is where I found this typescript library starter boilerplate. It is fully battery included: docs, tests, bundling. There is even a linter and code coverage. This seems to be a good start for my own usage… but still this is a lot of new techs to properly understand in order to maintain and debug my super simple library.

There is even a fork of this boilerplate in order to make some workflows (publishing and commiting) more customizable. I will try to gather enough courage to try this out shortly!