Why This Guide

JavaScript development has changed a lot in the last few years. You used to be able to open a text editor, write some JavaScript code and put a <script> tag in your HTML file to run it. You can actually still do that, but this only really works if you are building a very small piece of functionality that has no dependencies on other code.

With the advent of Single Page Applications (SPA), where we offload ever more application logic to the Browser, to the point that we now build whole applications Client Side, this old approach has become unsustainable. If you have ever struggled with continuously adding, updating and re-arranging multiple <script> tags in your HTML files to manage your dependencies, you know what I am talking about.

This guide will help you not only set up your development environment for Modern JavaScript development, but it will also explain why you need to do those things.

This guide is not a discussion about which tools are right or wrong. These are my opinions and you can take them or leave them.

This guide is also not a discussion about which JavaScript framework you should be using to build these SPAs, in fact, the tools used in this guide should be usable by any and all JS Frameworks.