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by karel-3d 104 days ago
Yesterday I stopped hating AI because it converted an old webpack project with impenetrable plugin settings to a single simple Vite config.

I still don't understand how people used to think scripts like this are the proper way to bundle an app.

https://github.com/facebook/create-react-app/blob/main/packa...

vite is great, is all I am saying
2 comments
jjice 104 days ago
800 lines config to compile code that's later interpreted is wild. I get the general idea behind having a script instead of a static config, so you can do some runtime config (whether or not we should have runtime changes to config is a different conversation), but this is absurd.

I'm a big believer in fully reviewing all LLM generated code, but if I had to generate and review a webpack config like this, my eyes would gloss over...

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karel-3d 104 days ago
No no no, the script on the link was BEFORE llms. That was how it used to be done before. That was the recommended facebook way.

The LLM generated vite config is 20 lines

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jjice 104 days ago
Oh yeah, I got that - my comment is a bit confusing reading it back. The fact we used to built trash like that blows my mind. Makes me content having been on the backend.
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ricardobeat 102 days ago
People fought to replace the tools of the era with this. It had some advantages over time - ES6, a good plugin ecosystem, react adoption - but quickly it just became "the standard" which everyone is afraid to question.

I used to maintain a build workflow library [1] a lifetime ago; while our frontend build needs have evolved way beyond it, I can't avoid the feeling that we overengineered a little too much.

[1] https://github.com/ricardobeat/cake-flour

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