[d2xdy2]

> For Webpack, that's creating an empty project and incrementally adding config, starting with just an entry point (use a simple script importing some modules) and an output filename. Add one loader/plugin at a time. Move into boilerplates once you're familiar with the basic concepts.

I attended a General Assembly bootcamp last year (to great success afterward for me), and the pervasiveness of jumping right into a generator / boilerplate really caught me the wrong way.

I felt like going the path you describe, starting with relatively low complexity and building on top of it, was/is the right way.

Even talking to co-workers who have been doing this stuff for years, there's little incentive to jump into a boilerplate, if only there's then two learning curves... one for the boilerplate / its layout, and one for the tooling involved (React or Angular, etc).

> A boilerplate is another person's code, and while it's good to avoid NIH, unless it's superbly documented, it contains tricks and workarounds that only cloud real understanding.

This caused a lot of headaches with other students in my class (and classes afterward).

My idea to "solve" it was to incrementally build out my/our own boilerplate so we'd be able to at least use that confidently, as well as maybe have some understanding into how someone else built their boilerplate. It got shot down due to time constraints, though.

Whenever I'm asked to come in and mentor newer students for their projects, this is something I try to impart, though.

[matt4077]

You're all selling this as if it were some sort of philisophy. But it's not. Webpack just happens to be a piece of software that for reasons nobody will ever fully understand ended up being the de facto standard, all while being the most miserable to configure piece of software seen by mankind. (I. e. 4-level depth nested configuration with no indication of errors, a few different common patterns – ph, and there are two versions of webpack and the documentation rarely mentions which one it's talking about)[0].

Webpack is, essentially, a compiler. It, or something else, will mature to the point where you don't configure it any more except for maybe a debug flag. At that point learning it's internals will be as useful to a web programmer as learning LLVM's (by which I don't mean "not useful", but probably not worth neglecting whatever the trade-off may be).

[0] I think it was mostly developed by a single guy with a day job, and it has had more impact than any software I have or probably will ever build, so it's not meant to be insulting. Annoyances such as these are the price of a fast-moving field.