Efficient development process for Golang (or any backend) and JavaScript?

Question

I am developing a web application. The frontend is a mix between JavaScript and server-side generated html. The backend is written in Golang. Might not be very important, but if somebody made a similar experience with that language, it could be of help.

As of now, everything was written in vim, and "debugged" in the browser (mostly Chrome). As the project gets larger I run into difficulties using my vim-chrome development stack. The backend development is not so hard, because Golang has a nice testing suite, which doesn't need much boilerplate to run. However, the mix between data-driven structs in the Golang templates, the Html and the JavaScript logic are getting somewhat complex:

• I find myself recompiling templates almost all the time when doing frontend development.

• I switch all the time between browser, vim (cygwin), web developer tools of the browser, and reloading pages, making sure caches are cleaned.

So, my question is, how could I make myself more efficient? How should I change my development-testing cycle to make the work more pleasant, especially the switching between server (development) and client (debugging).

(I am not looking for ONE SPECIFIC TOOL. I know this results in stupid answers. I am looking for development approaches, which happen to be accompanied by tools. So, offtopic, but might be interesting: Which tool combination has worked for you, if you ever encountered such a problem, and how did you use those tools?)

• gnat: product or service recommendations are explicitly off-topic per help center (it's the same here as at Stack Overflow). meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/…
• Kiril: Did you even read my whole post? Nevertheless, made some changes...

Answer 1

Use the following process:

• Consolidate the Golang template compilation and web developer tool debugging into node.js by finding a parser and a DOM emulator. Here are a few:

  • jsdom - npm

  • xmldom - npm

  • Mya-golang-template | Google Translate

• Use JavaScript unit testing and Selenium tests instead of running tests manually

• Use docker to encapsulate the frontend and backend dependencies