Writing Crank from Scratch

October 13, 2020

One of my goals when authoring Crank.js was to create a framework which was so simple that any intermediate JavaScript developer could conceivably write it from scratch. What I think makes this uniquely achievable for Crank is that its component model is built on top of JavaScript’s two main control flow abstractions, iterators and promises, allowing developers to write components exclusively with sync and async functions and generator functions.

The following is an attempt to prove that I’ve met this goal by rewriting the bulk of Crank’s core logic as a series of additive commits, with explanations for what I’m doing at each step.

Introducing Crank

April 15, 2020

After months of development, I’m happy to introduce Crank.js, a new framework for creating JSX-driven components with functions, promises and generators. And I know what you’re thinking: oh no, not another web framework. There are already so many of them out there and each carries a non-negligible cost in terms of learning it and building an ecosystem to surround it, so it makes sense that you would reject newcomers if only to avoid the deep sense of exhaustion which has come to be known amongst front-end developers as “JavaScript fatigue.” Therefore, this post is both an introduction to Crank as well as an apology: I’m sorry for creating yet another framework, and I hope that by explaining the circumstances which led me to do so, you will forgive me.