Platform · 2013–2019 · Cloud Scale
Gulp
Streaming build pipelines with code-over-config aesthetics. Briefly cool; webpack became the sun.
Why Gulp faded
Gulp faded when webpack absorbed bundling, transpilation, and dev server into one dependency graph. Streams were elegant for file transforms; inadequate for module resolution at scale. The last Gulp pipelines are migration tickets nobody prioritized.
Compare with
Related
Platform · 2012–2018
Grunt
The first JavaScript task runner that made config files a lifestyle. Gulp and webpack ate its lunch.
Platform · 2012–2023
Webpack
The bundler that taught JavaScript developers what suffering means. Still under legacy apps; Vite owns greenfield.
Platform · 2020–now
Vite
ESM-native dev server that made webpack feel instantaneously obsolete for new projects.