Comment by sailorganymede
5 hours ago
I am a big fan of Vite. But I have zero clue what those other tools are. I swear to God, I just put my head down to do some work and all the sudden, frontend tooling has evolved. I wonder if there is a push towards a "boring but works" stack.
> But I have zero clue what those other tools are.
The incorporated tools are actually really amazing:
- vitest, an ultra fast test runner. After using a lot of others, including jest and node's built in one, I love vitest.
- oxlint, replaces eslint but is compatible with its file format and ultra fast, since it isn't written JavaScript. I tried biome, but I found oxlint to have more rules and the eslint compatibility was nice.
- oxfmt, replaces prettier and is faster since it isn't written in JavaScript.
- rolldown, replaces rollup and is compatible with it but it is much faster since it isn't written in JavaScript.
The above are my go-tos in new projects anyhow since they are killer good and fast.
I don't get how a test runner can be "ultra fast". Surely all the time is taken by the tests, not calling the test functions?
At work we've tried switching to vitest, and it's 1.5-2x slower than Jest (I think it's related to our very large and circular module graph), so performance is very much a your-mileage-may-vary thing.
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Say this again when you have worked with Jest, one of the worst and slowest pieces of software I've ever worked with.
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> Surely all the time is taken by the tests, not calling the test functions?
Calling tests has overhead. Also knowing how to schedule and parallelize tests with dependencies is not as "simple".
I wish Oxfmt supported plugins. Prettier's plugin API is one of the worst APIs I've ever worked with. I'm eager to switch to a different formatter with a better plugin API (and I need plugins).
I was excited about Oxfmt until I tried it and found that it's mostly intended to be a Prettier replacement. Ugh.
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Have you tried contributing a system for that?
Rolldown is used in Vite (non plus) though.
the other tools are for testing, bundling, linting and formatting. Previously you would use different tools from very different open source projects for these things, with different configurations, update cycles etc. Now it's all covered by one simple toolchain. Vite+ is basically the "boring but works" stack, while also being more performant and with less configuration required.
It's a linter, a code formatter, a tester, and a bundler. What exists in your "boring" stack that's more boring than that?
I’ve bounced off Vite because I don’t see a big advantage over esbuild. (I also use Deno.) What do you find useful?
This is the latest emerging "boring but works" stack.
"Latest emerging boring but works" sounds like an oxymoron.
So something can only be "boring but works" if it was created before today?
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Or sarcasm.
That's what I liked from Bun's proposition. A single binary that just works. Hopefully the others take notice.
> Vite, Vitest, Rolldown, tsdown, Oxlint, and Oxfmt
You already use the first, the second you should be using and has existed for years - it's a jest-compatible runner integrated to Vite.
Rolldown is a part of Vite already (since version 8, alongside other implementing tools like lightnincss).
The ox* suite are native replacements for eslint and prettier. The latter has existed for years. Both of them aim to be drop-in compatible soon.
This is a boring stack.
FWIR, prior to the purchase by Vercel (or was it Cloud flare?), Vite+ was going to be a convenient, no fuss, low movement way set up projects that they sold to businesses for funding.
> This is a boring stack.
I think the boring stack would skip the need for most of these. That is 5 different tools to write TypeScript in order to get some HTML, CSS and JavaScript for things that are not covered by modern web standards. Not including the frameworks itself which mostly have the same goal.
Cloudflare.
Fear not, engineer! Recently some smart folks invented something called BackRub that’ll soon solve all your problems! Soon you’ll be able to find information in even less than time than it takes you to type a comment and out yourself as clueless!
I'm currently experimenting with a stack combining assistance, ASP.NET Razor Pages, and htmx, specifically to avoid dealing with the complexities of the modern frontend stack.
AI eliminates a lot of the tedium, grinding tasks, while HTML partials and htmx complement each other perfectly.
Not having to manage frontend framework, SSR states is incredibly liberating. Sprinkle in some vanillla js and redraw specific parts of the page as needed... done
Are you open to opportunities?
A "push" towards a boring stack? That won't happen because the hype cycle trends towards new tools like water down a river. But if you're looking, I can't recommend Rails enough in 2026. Built on web standards, it's quietly pushing the framework forward and is so much less maintenance than modern JS apps.
I guess I'm just an old man pumping my fist and yelling at the clouds at this point, but I think compartmentalizing every possible aspect of development and then making each one of those as complex as possible lead AI in the bureaucratic deterioration of the trade.