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Among other things, Babel allows me to use ES6/ES7/ES8 (e.g. async/await), to write my components in JSX and to type my code with Flow.
It would be so painful to work without Babel.
Thanks guys!
As an outsider to FE development, when I see posts like this, I just shudder at the complexity of the ecosystem.
It's no worse than any other ecosystem. Modern Java development is just as prickly -- the only difference is the complexity is more established. JS is still very "wild-west" because the community is still making rapid progress towards an ideal environment.
I haven't worked with Java for a long time, but from what I've been hearing from colleagues who are exploring writing production software with it, .NET Core is currently a bit of a mess, showing that even coherent dev stories can easily slip into disorder.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's no worse than any other ecosystem. Modern Java development is just as prickly -- the only difference is the complexity is more established. JS is still very "wild-west" because the community is still making rapid progress towards an ideal environment.
You may be right, but I'm not sure I totally agree. Maybe this is exactly what you meant, but I think the complexities are different. Java is inherently complex, I'll give you that, but in JS and FE development in general, it seems like the most basic building blocks are constantly being reinvented...large, open questions on basic stuff.
I've commented on this subject before[0], I think the past few years of web development has largely been about answering basic questions. Now there are well tested answers to those questions. I'm sure people will still reinvent these wheels, but now you don't have to when working on a large project.
Babel, Webpack et al are more useful when you're building a web-app, something generally comparable to a native app. The toolchain is complex, sure, but no more complex than what xcode or Android Studio do for you. I think the difference is that this has been a community effort, rather than a corporation assembling a product, so a) there are more people sharing opinions and b) the disagreements and exploration has been more public.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a insider to FE development, I'm tired of hearing comments about JS fatigue and all the rest. FE development is made of many moving parts and standards managed by different players. JS, for example, has to work on a variety of browsers, from obsolete to bleeding edge, from desktop to game consoles to mobile phones. Imagine if you had to write SQL that needs to run on ALL versions of ALL major databases, paired wit…
> It's unavoidable that it'd be like that. Why is that? > If it's not your thing, just keep clear of it. I don't currently do FE development, but like to keep abreast of changes. Why can't I make an observation about the apparent state of the ecosystem? Also, I didn't mention anything about fatigue. You're projecting that.
As an outsider to FE development, when I see posts like this, I just shudder at the complexity of the ecosystem.
Also, constant negative feedback discourages the creators and maintainers of projects like this from continuing to work on them:
https://medium.com/@thejameskyle/dear-javascript-7e14ffcae36...
As an outsider to FE development, when I see posts like this, I just shudder at the complexity of the ecosystem.
This is a point that is brought up a lot, and I'm happy that our community is having these discussions, but I don't think that this is the best place to bring it up again. This post is intended to convey a lot of technical, inside information about this tool to people who are already using it. If you don't know where to begin with Babel, this is not a good resource. Also, constant negative feedback discourages the cr…
To use ES6/ES7/ES8 (e.g. async/await), it's just:
npm install --save-dev babel-cli babel-preset-latest
"scripts": {
"build": "babel src -d dist --presets latest"
}Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's no worse than any other ecosystem. Modern Java development is just as prickly -- the only difference is the complexity is more established. JS is still very "wild-west" because the community is still making rapid progress towards an ideal environment.
I disagree that the constant churn in FE/JS is necessarily a sign of "rapid progress", rather than a lack of strong stewardship/leadership leading to people reinventing the wheel. I haven't worked with Java for a long time, but from what I've been hearing from colleagues who are exploring writing production software with it, .NET Core is currently a bit of a mess, showing that even coherent dev stories can easily sli…
There's lots of strong leadership. React, Angular, Vue, Ember, etc. all have very intelligent, hard-working people backing them. These frameworks aren't "reinventing the wheel", it's the complete opposite: the community has finally freed itself of jQuery/global scope/imperative DOM and these frameworks are all pushing the border in one way or another.
As an outsider to FE development, when I see posts like this, I just shudder at the complexity of the ecosystem.
It's no worse than any other ecosystem. Modern Java development is just as prickly -- the only difference is the complexity is more established. JS is still very "wild-west" because the community is still making rapid progress towards an ideal environment.
Most of the churn seems to come from people reinventing the wheel over and over again.
As an outsider to FE development, when I see posts like this, I just shudder at the complexity of the ecosystem.
> Babel transforms your JavaScript, You put JavaScript in, And get JavaScript out
That says all you need to know about the javascript ecosystem.