Welcome to the Treehouse Community
Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.
Looking to learn something new?
Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.
Start your free trial
Gregory Myers
21,988 PointsNewbie: Grunt or Gulp?
Hi All! I'm looking to get my feet wet with some task automation to simplify some build steps, but I'm not sure where to start. Grunt has been around longer but the community around gulp seems to be more active now. How useful are these tools to lone developers (aka not part of a team)? How often do you use them? What are the main differences? Which (if any) of them do you think would be best for a new user? Thanks!
2 Answers
Katherine Wakefield
Courses Plus Student 4,154 PointsHi, Just wanted to pass along my 2 cents. I went to code school and we were using Grunt. Things were going so fast that I couldn't grasp it. Javascript it my noble adversary and I have never learned it in 20 years -yeah not even in code school when it was being stuffing down my throat for two months. Out of code school, I knew there was something easier called Gulp. To make a long story short, it is my happy story. I taught myself Gulp. And I still don't know jack about javascript. Gulp is about patterns (all coding is), and I just figured out the repeating patterns and read a lot of documentation. A year later I am still tweaking my task stack with sass, jade, images, moving files, creating folders and a whole lot more. Honestly for a person who is Javascript illiterate - Gulp is the way to go. And to end it, as you may already have figured out, you don't have to know javascript to get Gulp going. PS - I have Prepros and Codekit too. It depends on the type of project which way I use. If I have an in depth long process project - gulp. A quick-get-it-done project either Prepros or Codekit - or even plugins for Brackets, Sublime Text and Atom.
Happy coding!
Alex Robertson-Brown
Courses Plus Student 8,956 PointsThere was a similar question answered here - https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/why-use-gulp-instead-of-grunt-where-does-gulp-excel-over-what-grunt-can-do
In what I've read online they are really similar. There are a few differences, but I think it comes down to personal preference. I've tried both and I found Gulp better, I much preferred the syntax of the gulpfile. I think its like choosing between sass or less. Its better to use one of them, then not use a task runner at all.
As for a lone developer if you want a simpler option you could look into CodeKit. Grunt & Gulp are better for larger teams as they are free and can be customised a lot to meet a specific workflow.