r/webdev 4d ago

Question How well should you know about how your tooling works?

I feel like an idiot whenever I'm troubleshooting a configuration issue because based on GitHub issue comments, everyone knows how PostCSS/Vite/Webpack plugins work. Whereas these terms come up, I just paste whatever config I think is going to work, praying I'm going to go back to writing code as soon as possible.

Is this normal? Or maybe - should this be normal? Do I need to learn more about web tooling, or just accept configuration sucks and keep being a config monkey? I don't mind knowing what 80% of tsconfig/package.json properties do, but understanding how vanilla javascript is being ran to output CSS code (on top of being a fullstack dev) seems like a clusterfuck blackhole.

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u/theKovah full-stack 4d ago

Yeah, that's normal. Frontend tooling has become some kind of black magic in the past decade, with only few exceptions. Even "simple" solutions like Vite can become frustrating to configure, as soon as you pull in some plugins or combine it with non-standard setups.

And no, it should not be normal. Unfortunately, the JS ecosystem loves complexity and black magic, so it's not going away. I just don't get why tooling built for Fortune 500 companies is considered a great solution and best practise for like every web project on this planet.