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I've purchased CodeKit a while ago, it makes front end projects really easy to setup.
The problem is, I'm in what I call a 'Front-end tool hell'
I've checked out Grunt and Yeoman a while back, and I don't see the point of using these tools if I'm using CodeKit. Am I missing a point?
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Gulp vs Grunt: Speed The reason for Gulp's current speed advantage is down to the fact that Gulp uses streams and handles tasks in memory, which means that only one file is written. Furthermore, Gulp can process several tasks at the same time, but Grunt will normally only handle one task at a time.
gulp and Grunt are task runners. They are different approaches to same problem. Grunt uses configuration based approach, while gulp uses streams from node to achieve result. You use them to define how and which tasks to execute (copying files, adding banners, replacing text, style checking, etc...).
One big advantage is that Gulp can make use of node streams, meaning that Gulp doesn't have to write intermediary files to disk. The upshot of this is that Gulp is usually much faster than Grunt, although it can have a slightly steeper learning curve because of the use of streams and promises.
gulp belongs to "JS Build Tools / JS Task Runners" category of the tech stack, while Yeoman can be primarily classified under "Front End Scaffolding Tools". Some of the features offered by gulp are: By preferring code over configuration, gulp keeps simple things simple and makes complex tasks manageable.
Short answer: No. You don't miss anything
Longer answer: All of those tools (maybe with the exception of Yeoman) tackle the same thing, but from completely different directions.
Codekit is great to start, because it's like a Swiss army knife of tools, where you actually don't have to do that much work to get it going. Easy to configure and totally easy to use, especially if you don't have any command line experience.
If you want to have things more flexible and you need maybe more than the provided tasks (running a server, creating proxy connections, FTP uploads, having tools included which CodeKit misses); or if you simply need to integrate your builds in continuous integration environments, you will most likely end up with a command line build tool, and also most likely with Grunt. Grunt's biggest strength is in having multiple configurations for different environments. So if you want to have the same code compiled in different ways for different destinations, that works wonderfully with Grunt. If Grunt can't offer you more than CodeKit, fine, stick with CodeKit!
Grunt has also its limitations, especially in terms of execution time and intermediate file results. That's because in Grunt you take a defined process and configure it. Gulp on the other hand allows you to define the process itself, thus making it even more flexible.
Oh, and concerning Yeoman: If you have a basic setup and like it, write a Yeoman generator and easily scaffold new ones by the push of a button. Or, if you are new to things like, let's say Angular, take a community generator and see what the pros think it's best for such an application. I'm not sure if CodeKit can do "project templates" by now, but that's the idea behind it.
Hope this helped.
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