JavaScript development is catching steam speedily. Currently, it holds robust ground as one of the most famous programming languages. It is continuously evolving, dynamic, and coming up with more tools to boost developers' productivity.
Every developer uses some set of JavaScript tools, but it all depends on the task. JavaScript ecosystem has several tools to make development easier and assist in debugging. Tools are getting better every day as developers are facing more issues with productivity. So, let tools be your friend to cope up with those front-end tasks.
The distinction between Libraries, Frameworks, and Tools
Here is the difference between these terms in the context of software development.
- Library - It's a set of certain functionality comprising cookies, events, network requests in a file form with a list of functions that perform a few tasks. JavaScript examples: Bootstrap, React, jQuery.
- Framework - It's an abstraction providing a basic way to create applications, data binding, a big part of functionality like events, storage. Example: Electron, Backbone, Angular, Node.
- Tool - It's a tiny assistant to ensure an easier development process, like maintenance, performance, etc. JavaScript examples: Mocha, Browserify, JSLint. This distinguishing helps in navigating the JavaScript ecosystem.
5 Productivity JavaScript Tools
1. ESLint
ESLint is another aspect of programming code used to catch any coding style and syntax errors. It helps keep the style of the code in proper sync. Being humans, there's a possibility to miss a closing bracket or some variable. So, analyzing the code for potential errors is known as Linting.
There are a certain set of default rules in ESLint, plus each rule is a plugin developer can configure that tool as they want. ESLint works well with NodeJS and supports Linux, Mac, Windows. It has been used by titans like Netflix, Atlassian, Microsoft, Zendesk, Domain, etc.
Learn about JavaScript Projects For Beginners .
2. NPM
NPM is a general-purpose task runner as well as a package manager for Javascript and Node. The Node Package Manager (NPM) is one of those productivity tools without which installing new libraries and packages is a bummer. You can find thousands of reusable code packages in this registry.
It works with two types of tasks:
Arbitrary (your task)
Default (for common problems like tests)
Nowadays, developers are preferring NPM over Gulp because of the big amount of plugins/packages and fewer debugging issues. The scripts are powerful and work well for cross-platform projects easily. It provides broad support for front-end frameworks/languages. Moreover, you can operate public and private code with the same workflow.
3. Rollup
It's a bundler permitting you to use the ESM syntax anywhere. Several syntaxes visible in wild (AMD, EMS, CJS, UMD) can be smoothed up by Rollup. It provides a feature of analyzing your codebase and removing unused imports.
Rollup links into package.json and node_modules through NPM. While using Rollup, one can easily forget about module syntax and use ESM. However, Rollup has a purpose to give you the experience of future JS development. It's similar to Webpack in managing, but it has support for Node.js output.
4. Vite
Formerly, Vite was a build tool, particularly for Vue. However, it now supports general use and has become the official build solution for SvelteKit.
It is focused on managing two demands for JS development:
Building for production
Running dev mode
Vite transfers the bundling tasks to Rollup as it's not a bundler. It promotes its speedy start development server and hot module replacement. The speed improvements of Vite depend on leveraging ESM and using EsBuild for bundling. Vite uses ESM and can offload the task of bundling to the browser during the development. It can get more granularity when finding which files are given while changes. For gaining features like CSS splitting, Vite now taps Rollup for production builds.
5. React
It's a JavaScript library offering new ways to serve web pages. With the advantage of reusability of code components, it's a time saver when you have to deal with system upgrades. It has isolated components and does not make changes in each other.
React.js is on top priority due to its data binding for a stable code, virtual DOM for improved speed. Facebook engineers created React Native, a mobile application development framework that serves iOS and Android platforms.
Summing Up
So these productivity tools for JavaScript development are very helpful. New tools, coming with a new landscape in mind offering better performance and an improved developer experience ahead. JavaScript is an interesting and speedily evolving world to develop in. Things are turning better for JavaScript developers.