Ask HN: Fatigued by the complexity of ES6 tooling. What to do?
A lot of posts on this thread about js library fatigue are advocating for... more libraries. Go figure. :) I advocate the opppsite: use as few tools as possible, until you realize why a tool is necessary.<p>With my current project, I started off with just Backbone and Typscript. Eventually, after hitting a few walls, I was like &quot;ah, that&#x27;s why React is necessary over Backbone&quot;. Then I realized why Redux was necessary. Then immutable. Then webpack. Each of these little revelations coming a month or two apart.<p>The problem with instantly installing every dev requirement you think you might need is that you may not actually need as many as you think, and then you&#x27;re burdened with unnecessary complexity. Along with, of course, the pain of learning and dealing with the intricacies of getting dependency each set up. Depending on the size of your project, Redux may not be necessary. Nor immutable, etc. But you won&#x27;t know if they are necessary until you understand them, and that only comes after using them or feeling the pain of not using them.<p>The only tool I believe is truly necessary for any web project is TypeScript. I could write a small novel on why, but the crucial reason here is that it enables you to do all the above refactoring with ease. Refactoring vanilla js is a nightmare.