Ze* would be pretty amazing. I don’t know zir* very well yet, but ze* sure seems to have a lot of people who like zir. Granted, there are also a fair few who are not afraid to speak out against gulp — but that’s hardly unusual when someone wonderful shows up on the scene.

Gulp was a little hard to follow at first. Ze uses all this language that, like everyone in the field, is a little perplexing until you’re used to it. I suppose you would call that jargon. Zir four main capabilities are expressed as .task, .pipe, .src, and .dest. The latter two are simply used to denote the source and destination of the files you would like gulp to operate on. .task is, of course, a description of the task you would like gulp to execute. Now, .pipe is, to my untrained eyes, the most wonderful and curious constituent of gulp. Ze isn’t showy about it, but once you understand it, it is the backbone of all the incredible functionality gulp so humbly offers. You see, the aptly named .pipe function takes a reference to a plugin you would like to see used on your code, and then pipes your code through that plugin from .src to .dest, leaving a new, neatly wrapped, perfectly articulated version of your code in wherever you have designated as the destination. The most beautiful thing about gulp, in my view, is the conceptualization afforded by the use of this code that represents sending code through a pipeline where it undergoes various transformations.

If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that gulp loves to accessorize. In fact, ze wouldn’t be that notable at all without all zir little friends. Gulp gets along with pug (formerly jade) for html, sass for css, mocha for testing, and basically anyone or anything else you’d like zir to. Ze can help you uglify your code for running, while leaving your original code untouched so when you come back to edit it/check it out, you aren’t bewildered by the wall of text that is uglified code. Ze can also lint your code, simplify the use of frameworks like react.js and express, compile coffeescript, and do a million other handy things that just makes zir a great companion.

Now, don’t get me wrong — there are probably other gizmos and gadgets that accomplish the same things in various permutations and combinations. But gulp can just do so MUCH! By golly, just in researching this article I discovered that ze can work with git for version control! Unbelievable! I tell ya folks, whatever you want to, you talk to gulp and the two of you will work something out to your satisfaction. With all zir connections, you won’t be disappointed.

*Note on “ze”, “zir” & “zirs”: these are commonly used gender-neutral pronouns, intended to lack any connotation of gender. I do not wish to assign a gender to Gulp, and thus I have selected these non-specific pronouns. For more information, feel free to check out this explanation from the Gender Neutral Pronoun Blog.

**Thanks to Dylan Harness for motivating this post.

Note: This post was migrated from its original home on Medium on February 23, 2017.