[shams93]

The power of web components is having the ability to develop complex front end without the need for a build tool in 2026. In 2008 when I got started with heavy javascript jquery was a must have tool to fill in for all the horrible browser api incompatibilites at the time. But because we are just developing custom elements with vanilla it works fine with vue and rust and all the others.

[austin-cheney]

I write in vanilla TypeScript. I do not have any build step in my application. Since Node now supports native type stripping I don't have a compile step either. I just write my code and then point node at the main file, and this even includes front-end code for the browser.

[thisoneisreal]

Can you explain more about how the front end aspect works? I'm not clear how the front end code could by TypeScript without a build step, unless I'm misreading.

[austin-cheney]

Node strips types on all imported code regardless of where that code executes.

[root_axis]

Node doesn't run in the browser.

[umvi]

Presumably Node is the server (back end), and when the browser requests a TS file, Node is stripping the types before serving it to the browser.

[root_axis]

That presumption is wrong, and doesn't quite make sense if you think about it.

[austin-cheney]

I am aware and it’s not what I said.

[root_axis]

You literally said "this even includes front-end code for the browser".

So what exactly are you referring to here?

[tancop]

> develop complex front end without the need for a build tool

zero build on complex front ends is disrespectful to your users. when you dont minify and code split you are basically saying "got a slow connection? tough luck, go wait for 10 seconds while this page loads 1.5mb of code that could be 5x smaller but i dont care enough to spend a couple minutes on a basic vite setup."

you might get away with it when its a mostly static page with a couple lines of script but when its a bigger app users will notice. "just write less code" is not an option most of the time. and tsc is also a build tool so if you take it strictly you either get no type safety or get stuck with awful looking jsdoc comments that take up space in your final script file.