

Ask HN: Are Client side JavaScript loaders really worth the hassle? - antihero

I&#x27;ve gone from using multiple script tags, to basic uglification, to AMD&#x2F;Require.JS to Browserify+Grunt. I can definitely some advantages as you explicitly import things, however, every time I find a new library, I have to ponder what things I&#x27;m going to have to do in order to get it to actually work with this rather heavyweight system. I mean, if I could get it down to simply being a CoffeeScript watch with some sort of minification process (plus support for Bower packages, of course), it might make my life a whole lot simpler. Currently I&#x27;m using AngularJS, d3, CoffeScript and a bunch of other libraries (e.g. Bootstrap&#x2F;Angularstrap).<p>What is your ideal JavaScript&#x2F;CoffeeScript workflow?<p>How do you get bower packages working?<p>How easy is it to integrate other packages that aren&#x27;t made properly (or broken bower packages that browserify+debowerify cannot find)?<p>What advantages does browserify actually give you?<p>How do you change things between debug and production?
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givehimagun
I like this question. I think AngularJS' latest presentation echoes some of
your issues with the complexity of adding in multiple javascript packages with
different loading mechanisms.

