Minification
In one sentence
Removing whitespace, comments and redundant syntax from code without changing behaviour.
Analogy Mental model
Condensing a long document into its essentials. Same meaning, far fewer pages.
In practice What you actually do
The build tool does this by default; make sure it is on for production and off for development. Keep source maps published privately so a stack trace from a customer still points at a line of real code.
Where people get burned Pitfalls
Hand-minifying files that are later edited is how a site ends up with two divergent copies of the same script. Let the pipeline own it, and cache-bust with a content hash.
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