[VPenkov]

37 Signals [0] famously uses their own Stimulus [1] framework on most of their products. Their CEO is a proponent of the whole no-build approach because of the additional complexity it adds, and because it makes it difficult for people to pop your code and learn from it.

[0]: https://basecamp.com/ [1]: https://stimulus.hotwired.dev/

[evilduck]

It's impossible to look at a Stimulus based site (or any similar SSR/hypermedia app) and learn anything useful beyond superficial web design from them because all of the meaningful work is being done on the other side of the network calls. Seeing a "data-action" or a "hx-swap" in the author's original text doesn't really help anyone learn anything without server code in hand. That basically means the point is moot because if it's an internal team member or open source wanting to learn from it, the original source vs. minified source would also be available.

It's also more complex to do JS builds in Ruby when Ruby isn't up to the task of doing builds performantly and the only good option is calling out to other binaries. That can also be viewed from the outside as "we painted ourselves into a corner, and now we will discuss the virtues of standing in corners". Compared to Bun, this feels like a dated perspective.

DHH has had a lot of opinions, he's not wrong on many things but he's also not universally right for all scenarios either and the world moved past him back in like 2010.

[VPenkov]

Well you do learn that a no-build process can work at some scale, and you can see what tech stack is used and roughly how it works.

But regardless, I didn't mean to make any argument for or against this, I'm saying this was one of the points DHH made at some point.

[christophilus]

Dunno. You can build without minifying if you want it to be (mostly) readable. I wouldn’t want to give up static typing again in my career.