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Hasty Treat - Bundlers in 2020

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about the state of bundlers in 2020 — Rome, Snowpack, Parcel, Webpack, Rollup, Vite, and more!

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Show Notes

02:39 - What is a bundler?

  • On the one hand, you can write HTML, CSS and JavaScript and open it in the browser
  • On the other hand, your build could be super complex

03:24 - What goes into configuring a bundler?

  • Templating language you use (Jsx, Pug, Vue, etc.)
  • JavaScript you write and compile to:
    • ES6/7/8/9
    • Typescript
    • CoffeeScript
  • Polyfills
  • Environmental variables
  • CSS loading
  • Image compression
  • Asset Chunking
  • Tree shaking

05:12 - Webpack

  • Hardest to learn, most used currently

07:38 - Rollup

  • Scott’s pick as best option for most features vs ease of use
  • Very powerful
  • Mmmr, tree shaking, plugins, esm

09:52 - Parcel

  • Scott’s simplicity winner pick
  • Easiest to get started with
  • It’s a bundler, but also a dev tool
    • Hot reload
    • Local server
  • Config is done via your package.json
  • Lots of plugins available

12:01 - Npm, Yarn and Yarn 2

  • It’s a dependency installer rather than a bundler

13:27 - Snowpack

  • Scott’s speed pick of the week
  • Uses ESM by default
  • Like Sonic after a triple shot of espresso
  • HRM
  • Perfect for dev builds, as well as production builds

15:51 - Isobuild / Meteor

  • Scott’s underdog pick of the litter

16:48 - Rome

  • Scott’s mystery pick of the week
  • New tool to do it all
  • Bundler, but also a linter

17:54 - Deno

  • Linter
  • Typescript formatter
  • Bundler (bundle into a single .js file)

20:44 - Let your tool take care of it

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