2024

NOTE: This post was published while Rspack’s latest version was v1.0.0-beta.4. Some details are likely to change as Rspack approaches its 1.0 release.

Rspack is a Rust-based alternative to Webpack that promises to be faster and includes a few common conveniences too. After a year of trying, I’ve finally finished converting my two largest Webpack projects to Rspack. Here are some of the things I learnt along the way.

I wrote most of this post sometime in 2022 but I think it holds up alright in 2024 so I decided to publish it for posterity. I don’t really like doing posts like this—I’d much rather share some innocuous learnings or tips but it turns out I have opinions too 😓 Sorry!

2024-02-21: I’ve added a few reflections at the end of the post.

2024-04-27: Developpez.com has produced a French translation of this post.

Since I quit Mozilla and went back to full-time Web development, I’ve discovered a few surprises. It turns out Web development is actually pretty hard, Web developers are actually very smart, and some of these frameworks and techniques we mocked as browser engineers aren’t so bad. Oops.

At the same time, it turns out some Web developers have ideas about browsers and the Web that, as a former browser engineer and standards editor, I’m a bit dubious of.

Here are a few of the things that surprised me.