webpack adoption guide: Overview, examples, and alternatives

Webpack is a JavaScript module bundler that has become a staple in web development due to its ability to combine and optimize code, enhancing performance and manageability. Originating in 2012, it evolved alongside the rise of task runners like Grunt and Gulp, which sought to automate repetitive development tasks. Despite the advent of faster bundlers like esbuild, SWC, and Vite, which leverage languages like Go and Rust for improved speed, webpack remains popular due to its flexibility, extensive ecosystem of plugins and loaders, and its capacity to handle complex web development tasks. As a tool that enables developers to write modular code, webpack builds a dependency graph and processes various file types, including TypeScript, through loaders such as ts-loader and plugins like fork-ts-checker-webpack-plugin. While newer tools are gradually gaining traction, webpack's robust capabilities and widespread use in existing projects ensure its continued relevance in the developer community.