| I agree with everything you wrote. Also, things seem to be converging towards simplicity in a positive way, comparing e.g. Vite to Webpack. But without any disagreement:
the churn is real. Not upgrading is only an option if you 1) are sure you don't run vulnerable code on a server (e.g. through SSR) - if any code is public-facing, ignoring most "npm audit" reports ceases to be an option.
2) don't need new packages to change your build setup that are significantly newer than your previous setup. To repeat, I don't disagree and I prefer the spirit of your comment to my critique. Almost all of the time it is a good idea to settle on versions and evaluate when upgrading is worth it. Update costs can also vary a lot depending on the project. In other words, preserving behavior while fixing dependency conflicts, breaking changes etc after updating major versions. If one avoids to do clever stuff with the bundler and if the project requirements are simple, it can be easy upgrade or even swap tools (e.g. Webpack for Vite). This rings very true for me, bravo: > My frontend dev setups perform auto reload on save in my IDE within a second, have clean integration with testing suites and CI/CD, and do so much beyond my ability to build on my own. Even if I were dedicated to dev build environments and had the sufficient skill to make a stable and complete solution, I will have incurred the opportunity cost of not actually solving my initial frontend problems the clients are paying me for. > Change happens. > "Dr. Strangedevelop" or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Vite" |