Preface |

In The Beginning #

In the beginning there was nothing, not even time.
No planets, no stars, no hip-hop, no rhyme.
But there was a bang like the sound of my gat,
The universe began and the sh– was phat.
—MC Hawking

The title of this book is Simplicity Is A Virtue and not only is this claim correct, but we will be emphasizing it a great deal in future chapters. Many books, and countless Ph.D. theses, have been written about complexity being the bane of software development. The positions taken and remedies suggested by these many authors are all-over-the-map, but it is safe to say that nobody is in favor of adding complexty.

After two attempts I’m going to put off this page. #

Not sure what example to use here to illustrate the complexity and diffilut interactions between tools/frameworks – the tailwind build procdure? Single out js frameworks?

[discuss the issue of starter or template projects versus "day 2" things]

Although many are familiar with this problem, it bears repeating: Software never shrinks it only expands. You might notice this because you install some javascript tool and you end up installing 147 packages in your `node_modules`.

The Javascript community, especially those that work on the browser part of applications seem to be in a perverse re-run of Groundhog day.

Yay, we’ve released the first preview release of new tool <whatevs>! This is a moneumental day because you no longer are going to be forced to use the old framework <blah> anymore because whatevs is smaller, faster, better, easier to use, and can make a mango milkshake. Don’t succumb to the bloatware of blah! It’s simply too big and complex to get anything serious done with! Whatevs is the smaller, simpler future!
Numerous people begin trolling and pointing out all the features of the many previous blahs that are done badly or totally missing in whatevs. The developers of whatevs dutifully begin adding in bad copies of the requested features. Whatevs begins increasing in size…
Today is a momemntous day in front end developmen with the release of <fleazil>. Don’t succumb to working with the bloated and complex whatevs framework! The time is now to switch to <fleazil> because …

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

The title of this collection of babel and drivel is "Simplicity Is A Virtue" with a longer subtitle. This choice is not an accident, even if we sometimes wander far afield from _our lane_. One reason that this is a fine title for a work such as this is, well, it's true. There are, in fact, others.

Sometimes in this book you will see sidebars that explain the _why_ of tools that we use and use in this book, especially datastar. We've not chosen these tools because they the embodiment of simplicity (although some are). We've chosen them because the _idea_ that needs to be communicate with someone else for them to understand what the tool does is small, clear, and doesn't need a thick book and a lawyer to get the hang of it.

Preface

Preface #

In The Beginning #

After two attempts I’m going to put off this page. #

The Javascript Framework Du Jour #