user: What is an "incremental bundler" for web applications? I guess a prominent example is Webpack. Explain it to me like I know how software works but am not very experienced with web technologies.

assistant: An incremental bundler is a tool used in web development to bundle together the various components of a web application, such as JavaScript files, CSS files, and images, into a single file that can be served to the user's browser. The purpose of bundling is to optimize the performance of the application, by reducing the number of requests that the browser needs to make to the server to load all the components of the application. An incremental bundler like Webpack is designed to make this process more efficient by only rebuilding parts of the bundle that have changed since the last build, rather than rebuilding the entire bundle every time there is a change. This can save a significant amount of time and resources, especially for larger applications.
In more technical terms, Webpack is a module bundler that operates on the concept of dependencies between modules. It takes in entry points, which are the main files that the application needs to load, and recursively processes all the dependencies of those files, creating a graph of modules. Then it uses various loaders and plugins to transform and optimize each module, and finally bundles them all together into a single output file.
Overall, an incremental bundler like Webpack is an essential tool for modern web development, helping to optimize the performance and efficiency of web applications, and making it easier for developers to manage and build complex applications.

user: What are some other incremental bundlers? Would Vite be considered an incremental bundler? Would esbuild be considered one?

assistant: Other common incremental bundlers include:

Rollup - focuses on bundling modules for the frontend using a "tree-shaking" process to remove unused code
Parcel - aims for very fast bundling speeds and easy setup, good for smaller projects
Snowpack - unique in that it leverages newer JavaScript features to avoid bundling altogether in development, and only creates a bundle for production
Vite and esbuild could be considered incremental bundlers. Vite is focused on dev server speed and leverages browser native ES modules, while esbuild is focused on extremely fast bundling speeds. They take a more minimalist approach compared to Webpack's very configurable setup.

The key benefits of incremental bundling are:

Faster build and reload times due to only bundling changed files
More efficient use of resources since full rebuilds are avoided when possible
Improved developer experience thanks to the speedups, allowing for a tighter feedback loop while building web apps
The tradeoffs to evaluate would be:

Added complexity in setup and configuration for more powerful bundlers like Webpack
Requirement to learn how the bundler works and use it as part of your build process
Incremental bundling may be overkill for very small projects, where a simpler bundler or no bundler at all could suffice
Overall, I would recommend trying out a few different incremental bundlers and seeing how they fit into your workflow and project needs. For complex applications, the resource savings of incremental bundling can be valuable, but for smaller projects the added complexity may not be worthwhile. Let me know if you have any other questions!