On our last post we were talking about more ways to improve your build process with broccoli, how about ending this blog series with a rant? :P

the complexity paradox

Well, there I said it. Complex.

With this comment we go full circle back to where we started. Talking about trying to learn ember.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like broccoli and desire from the bottom of my heart to see it thrive and succeed. So call me caremad.

too many moving parts

We all know the history - sometimes you just do what you need for catering to other project’s needs, then realizes you’ve did something with an amazing potential and spins it off as a standalone thing. That’s awesome!

Broccoli’s sample app’s Brocfile.js is scary. It’s just too much info for any newcomer to dig into. And my personal experience tells me that the very same problem affects ember too.

• coffeescript support
• bower
• sass
• es6 modules
• transpiling
• templates that aren’t pre-compiled, just exposed as es6 modules
• appkit (wtf is this?)

Well, you aren’t forced to use all this, but heck, this is the sample app. It’s pretty easy to get lost on all the tools/nomenclature.

Aren’t we scaring out potential new users by introducing too many moving parts?

I don’t have the answers, my experience tells me that being opinionated is good. Heck, I’m opinionated as shit and I feel this is just too much.

Same with ember. Sure the ideas are awesome, and I can see it will gain traction, but do we really need that steep learning curve? There’s no resort for it beyond enduring the pain until it wanders away?

wrap-up

Can we start thinking on treating broccoli as a first-class citizen, or it’s too early yet? I hate to see it being promoted as that build tool that ember-cli is built upon.

Am I crazy? I’d love to hear from you!

Awesome broccoli wrap picture taken from here