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In technology, development is crucial. Our team at DevDigital is constantly seeking to learn new tools and advancements that help us develop websites in the most effective and efficient manner possible. A new technology that our team has recently discovered is called "GruntJS" and is a JavaScript Task Runner that boasts the advantage of automation. Essentially, GruntJS enables developers to do less manual work when performing repetitive tasks like minification, compilation, unit testing, linting, and other tasks. The less manual labor involved in repetitive tasks such as these, the easier a developer’s job becomes—thus saving money for the client and allowing them to focus their energy and attention on the bigger and more complex tasks.

GruntJS is built on top of Node.js and is a task-based command-line tool that speeds up workflows by reducing the effort required to prepare assets for production. It does this by wrapping up jobs into tasks that are compiled automatically as a developer works. Essentially, Grunt can be used on most tasks that would consider being “grunt work” that would normally require manual configuration.  

There are many reasons to use Grunt—its ecosystem is big and growing every day. There are hundreds of plugins to choose from and can be used to automate tasks that would require the time and attention of developers. It is important to incorporate Grunt into the project development cycle for a number of reasons. When faced with slow loading pages or websites, developers have to work on optimization which includes css, js compression, and minification to reduce the size of the resources that are getting loaded on the page. Currently when this minification takes place, it becomes difficult for developers to modify anything in it. If there are any js or css changes that need to occur, developers have to keep the original non-minified versions of the files. It is from the original files that developers are able to make changes and they must also follow all of the steps to compress, and minify the css and js again.

Grunt provides the crucial service of automation and can also identify any serious problems for the developers. By using Grunt, it will keep all original files as they are and then complete the minification, compression, and uglifications of js and css automatically when updates are made to the original files. This enables the developer’s time and attention to be freed up to focus on other tasks.

Grunt is something that our PHP team is strongly considering implementing in our development environment. Grunt can also be applied to our .NET team. With the addition of Grunt, we are hopeful and optimistic that it should help make our processes as efficient and fast as possible. Additional benefits of Grunt are added security, improved coding standards, and uglified java scripts.

By learning of this technology early on, our team is becoming stronger and more capable than ever before. Our commitment to our clients means a commitment to adopting the newest technologies. At DevDigital, we are eager to serve you in the most efficient way possible. Contact us today to see how our team can help you achieve your technological goals.