Local Development

Problem

Slow build times and missing hot reload force developers to wait seconds or minutes after every code change to see results. Without proper debugging tools, developers resort to console.log debugging and manual browser refreshes, making the development cycle frustratingly slow and unproductive.

Solution

Set up development environments that provide fast feedback, hot reload, and debugging tools. This makes developing and testing features locally fast and productive.

Example

This example shows a basic Vite development setup that provides fast hot reload, instant builds, and a preview server for testing production builds locally.

{
  "scripts": {
    // Start dev server with hot reload on port 3000
    "dev": "vite --port 3000",
    // Build optimized production bundle
    "build": "vite build",
    // Preview production build locally before deploying
    "preview": "vite preview"
  }
}

Benefits

• Dramatically speeds up development with instant feedback on code changes.
• Improves developer experience with hot reload and fast builds.
• Enables efficient debugging with source maps and browser dev tools.
• Reduces friction between writing code and seeing results.

Tradeoffs

• Requires initial setup and configuration of build tools.
• Development builds may behave differently than production builds.
• Can mask performance issues if dev builds are optimized differently.
• Needs maintenance as build tools and dependencies evolve.