Webpack integration landed in Rails 5.1 to a bit of excitement and confusion. On one hand, folks who had been using Javascript frameworks like Angular and React now have a clearer way to tie in their client-side application into the asset pipeline. Yet, why would we want to do this? What’s the purpose of adding Webpack to Rails, and what’s the advantage of utilizing it? How does this affect javascript frameworks that aren’t Webpack friendly? In this talk, we’ll explore these ideas as well as the future of client side integrations into Rails.