---
title: "No-build frontend web development"
date: 2025-05-31T11:04:49-07:00
url: https://blog.lmorchard.com/2025/05/31/no-build-webdev/
author: Les Orchard
tags: [es6, js, javascript, webdev]
---

# No-build frontend web development

Simon Willison on [no-build wedev](https://simonwillison.net/2025/May/31/no-build/):

> If you've found web development frustrating over the past 5-10 years, here's something that has worked worked great for me: give yourself permission to avoid any form of frontend build system (so no npm / React / TypeScript / JSX / Babel / Vite / Tailwind etc) and code in HTML and JavaScript like it's 2009.

This blog has a ["backend" build process](https://github.com/lmorchard/blog.lmorchard.com/blob/main/index.js) to produce the static HTML. But, [the frontend](https://github.com/lmorchard/blog.lmorchard.com/blob/main/content/public/index.js) is pretty much build-free. 

Web development with "vanilla" JavaScript has gotten pretty good in the last decade, thanks to [Modules](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Modules), [dynamic `import()`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Operators/import), [Custom Elements](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_components/Using_custom_elements), and a pile of other relatively recent APIs. 

The easy path at work these days tends to be Next.js, but I kind of hate it. All my side projects start with `touch index.{html,js,css}`.  I roll on from there with maybe a live-reload HTTP server pointed at the directory (e.g. `npx reload src`).

That said, I have started playing with carefully re-introducing *some* build tooling for [a few side projects](https://blog.lmorchard.com/2025/04/25/sketches-as-web-components/index.html) - but, only for external dependencies. I've tinkered a bit with [using esbuild to compose bundles as JS modules](https://github.com/lmorchard/sketches-v03/blob/main/build.js) importable by the rest of my unbundled modules. 

The nice thing about this is that I can treat those external dependencies as standalone utility modules without infecting the rest of my project with build machinery. I can even just check in a copy of the built asset to keep the project stable and usable, years later.