[untog]

Remember to run that watch thingy every time you develop.

Well, that's the beauty of it, for me. I run everything through gulp, so I don't need to remember to run the watch thingy - I type:

    gulp watch

which starts up my dev web server, complete with LiveReload shims enabled. Then when I'm ready to build I do

    gulp dist

and it packages everything up.

[Touche]

I'm confused, you say you don't have to remember and then you say you typed gulp watch. Is the fact that you typed something an indication that you remembered to do so?

I understand that some people like this workflow, what I don't like about it is when I start working on a project I don't want to spend 15 minutes setting up build scripts, downloading the entirety of npm, etc. I just want to start hacking in the browser. Client-side loaders make that really easy, just drop in the .js file and go.

Again, I know some people like that workflow and I'm not saying you're wrong, just pointing out that there is a tradeoff, it's not a clear win by any stretch.

[untog]

I'm confused, you say you don't have to remember and then you say you typed gulp watch.

Well you have to type something in order to start your project unless you like using file:/// URLs. "gulp watch" doesn't just run the watch task - it runs the entire dev environment with watch. How do you run multiple projects with Apache?

And while setting up these modules is a process, I only really have to do it once - I have a template directory I just copy into a new project. Then everything in the src/ directory gets processed accordingly once I type 'gulp watch'.

[Touche]

> Well you have to type something in order to start your project unless you like using file:/// URLs. "gulp watch" doesn't just run the watch task - it runs the entire dev environment with watch. How do you run multiple projects with Apache?

Apache serves everything under ~/dev and that's where I stick new client-side projects.

[untog]

Do you have a build process? I still want to concatenate and minify for production, so I'm using a build task anyway. At that point having everything run in one place is no bad thing. Especially for whoever comes after me.

[Touche]

That really depends. If I'm writing a small module that others will use, there's no reason to build that. Or I might just be experimenting with some new browser API.

It's nice to be able to just start coding without the friction of setting up every project as though it were some large thing that would include production builds, automated tests, and many other developers. Of course you can work on those types of projects with client-side loaders just as easily.

I recommend trying out jspm: http://jspm.io/ It is all about removing the friction that people often have with client-side loaders (I have to maintain another config file, the horror! ;) but is also forward-compatible as it implements the upcoming ES6 module loading stuff. You can use CommonJS, AMD, or ES6, and mix and match the three.

[fourstar]

I see that you are trying to stick to your guns, but it sounds like you never even gave this a try. It's so easy to do, and if you write Sass, LESS, or any other css preprocessor languages, then you're already doing this somehow (and if you don't you're working on tiny projects).

Client side loaders (et al AMD based RequireJS) are dumb. I've been there, done that. I'll minify my js code and then "just drop the .js file" into my page, and let gulp watch for changes.

[Touche]

Client-side loaders support plugins too. Less, Sass, CoffeeScript, ES6, literally anything you want. I don't know why you would accuse me of not giving Browserify a try (I have several projects that use it, but I guess that's not giving it a try) when you didn't even know that client-side loaders support plugins.

Hell, you could even use a client-side loader exactly as you are doing with Browserify/Webpack. Just set up a watch task that builds unminified and there you go! It's just nice that they aren't dependent on a cli process. But unlike you, I'm not trying to convert anyone here, just pointing out that there are advantages to using client-side loaders. For example, it promotes separation of client-side code from server-side code. Using the same package.json file for both promotes bad practices like developing with the server running and writing code that's not easily testable without the server running.