Mac user issues: Unexpected token and site can't be reached
Download opened this issue · comments
This is some feedback for you guys that may help you make enrollment a better experience for new Mac users.
I tried out Svelte today by following the instructions here:
https://svelte.dev/
npx degit sveltejs/template my-svelte-project
cd my-svelte-project
npm install
npm run dev
This gave me an Unexpected token
error as described in #236. There is a solution in that thread as well that worked for me. However, a remark on Svelte.dev or maybe as the first line of this template's output when running npm run dev
that the minimal Node JS version is... whatever it is, might be helpful. I guess running an old Node version is not that common, but when you do, like I did, you get no messages about versions whatsoever but just end up with a weird Unexpected token
message that may cause some to conclude that Svelte is simply broken. I read a lot about Svelte and I am eager to try to use it, so I persisted this time. But I tried hundreds of different Open Source frameworks and libraries over the years and because so many of them are broken out of the box, I made it into sort of a rule that I would try the hello world sample first when looking at a project and only if that works flawlessly right away will I even look into the rest of the project. Because I have to save time somewhere so if the Hello World doesn't even run then forget about it. I broke this rule with Svelte because I am so enthousiastic about the ideas behind it, but really this is probably chasing a lot of new devs away.
The second thing I encountered was that after upgrading Node JS to latest, npm run dev
did work, but when trying to access localhost:5000 I was greeted with This site can't be reached
, as described in issue #184 I know that this issue has been acknowledged and has been reported to sirv
, but I would still like to inform you that for Mac users, chances are currently very high that they will give up on Svelte before ever getting started because out of the box the Hello World example simply does not work as intended. So I think you can improve your enrollment experience quitte dramatically by implementing 2 small changes:
- Mention the minimum Node JS version, or possibly even detect it, in this template
- Change the default port of
sirv
to something that is not taken by default on Mac
Oh and just to leave you with some positive news as well:
Svelte is fast! The whole install using the instructions above happened within seconds and also npm install
. and npm run dev
were blazing fast. Also, when loading the web page it's just near-instant. That's the way it's supposed to be, but many projects out there are slow. You avoided that succesfully and that's a great achievement! Thank you for building Svelte! 👍