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The State of Babel

babeljs.io

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Re: The State of Babel

#61

Post by flukus »

ng12 wrote: post #40
flukus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the number of binding/UI frameworks, look at the package managers, look at the number of unit test libraries, look at the number of build tools. Many get reinvented in a bubble when there are plenty of options already. Now half (maybe more) of the libraries are being written in languages that aren't javascript so now there are multiple competing ecosystems on top of javascript. And then you have things like a…

So the argument is essentially "there's a lot of stuff I don't really understand, a lot of it must be redundant"? React isn't just Angular with a different name -- they have fundamentally different views on how web development should be done. They also fit different use cases (Angular is a one-stop-shop, React is minimalist by design). Same thing with the build systems. Add in the fact that a lot of this wasn't possi…

Sure react and angular are different, what about the dozens of others? I posted elsewhere the number of crappy make clones alone:

https://www.npmjs.com/search?q=make+build

Re: The State of Babel

#62

Post by spraak »

hyperdunc wrote: post #42
atomical wrote: post #33

Is this where CoffeeScript left off? How would you compare it to CoffeeScript?

There are many differences. One is that CoffeeScript will always need to be compiled. Code written in, e.g. ES7, will not have to be compiled down with Babel anymore once browsers in the wild all support ES7. Also, AFAIK CoffeeScript restricts you to using JS features found in ES5.

CoffeeScript is most similar to ES6 but with some slight differences in syntax and style

Re: The State of Babel

#64

Post by 6t6t6t6 »

hyperdunc wrote: post #42
atomical wrote: post #33

Is this where CoffeeScript left off? How would you compare it to CoffeeScript?

There are many differences. One is that CoffeeScript will always need to be compiled. Code written in, e.g. ES7, will not have to be compiled down with Babel anymore once browsers in the wild all support ES7. Also, AFAIK CoffeeScript restricts you to using JS features found in ES5.

I have the intuition that the plans of the developers of the future version of JS are that you will always have to transpille the code.

https://youtu.be/3pKNRgResq0

On the other hand, I think that the time of CoffeeScript has passed. It made some sense before Babel but now, IMHO, it is only for Ruby developers who don't like the syntax of JavaScript.

Re: The State of Babel

#65

Post by Klathmon »

douche wrote: post #55
gotofritz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree that the constant churn in FE/JS is necessarily a sign of "rapid progress", It's the field that is progressing rapidly. Browsers are constantly adding new APIs, problems are being solved, etc. The difference is that it's open source > a lack of strong stewardship/leadership You can't have leadership in a field which has no owner. It's not like Oracle owning Java and deciding what happens with it. > peopl…

How many times do we have to rewrite make in nodeJS?

You mean the same make that has multiple abstractions built on top of it (cmake, scons, autotools, etc...)?

Snark aside, just because a product exists doesn't mean it's perfect, it doesn't mean that it can't be improved on.

Gulp is significantly easier to work with than make for many usecases, and tools like webpack aren't really comparable to make.

Re: The State of Babel

#66

Post by zodiac »

ggregoire wrote: post #27
kylec wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

By the way, it's absolutely painless to setup Babel. To use ES6/ES7/ES8 (e.g. async/await), it's just: npm install --save-dev babel-cli babel-preset-latest And then in the package.json: "scripts": { "build": "babel src -d dist --presets latest" }

To be fair that assumes you have node and npm set up properly, including making them upgradable, making sure node_modules is in PATH, etc. I think it's easy to forget "obvious" knowledge like this that (for me at least) had to be figured out with some trial and error.

Re: The State of Babel

#67

Post by hzoo »

Author here, if anyone had questions or wanted to know more about how to help out!

Personally, I'm most excited about babel-preset-env, and fixing how we work with the TC39 process via experimental plugins, and working with the community more.

For anyone wanting to get started in OSS or Babel I just started a year ago from knowing nothing about it!

Re: The State of Babel

#68

Post by BigJono »

flukus wrote: post #61
ng12 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the argument is essentially "there's a lot of stuff I don't really understand, a lot of it must be redundant"? React isn't just Angular with a different name -- they have fundamentally different views on how web development should be done. They also fit different use cases (Angular is a one-stop-shop, React is minimalist by design). Same thing with the build systems. Add in the fact that a lot of this wasn't possi…

Sure react and angular are different, what about the dozens of others? I posted elsewhere the number of crappy make clones alone: https://www.npmjs.com/search?q=make+build

What about them? As a front-end develop I don't know or care about them until they solve a problem I have with the existing toolset. I couldn't care less whether there's one alternative to React/Angular or a thousand.

Re: The State of Babel

#69

Post by Klathmon »

flukus wrote: post #61
ng12 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the argument is essentially "there's a lot of stuff I don't really understand, a lot of it must be redundant"? React isn't just Angular with a different name -- they have fundamentally different views on how web development should be done. They also fit different use cases (Angular is a one-stop-shop, React is minimalist by design). Same thing with the build systems. Add in the fact that a lot of this wasn't possi…

Sure react and angular are different, what about the dozens of others? I posted elsewhere the number of crappy make clones alone: https://www.npmjs.com/search?q=make+build

For starters, why is that a problem? You aren't forced to use them all, you aren't forced to use any of them.

But secondly, what makes them crappy? I've used make, and IMO it's pretty crappy itself. Have you had to maintain a recursive makefile? It's a complete nightmare to say the least. And i'm far from the only one to think make is worthy of a "remake". In fact even in just the C/C++ world there is cmake, qmake, autotools, scons, ninja, bazel, premake, waf, shake, tup, etc...

If you run your same search in pip, or ruby gems, or composer, or cargo, or cpan, or any other package manager for any other language and i'm sure you'll see it's fair share of build tools, frameworks, libraries, and unmaintained stuff.

It's not a problem, and it never will be.

Re: The State of Babel

#70

Post by douche »

6t6t6t6 wrote: post #64
hyperdunc wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many differences. One is that CoffeeScript will always need to be compiled. Code written in, e.g. ES7, will not have to be compiled down with Babel anymore once browsers in the wild all support ES7. Also, AFAIK CoffeeScript restricts you to using JS features found in ES5.

I have the intuition that the plans of the developers of the future version of JS are that you will always have to transpille the code. https://youtu.be/3pKNRgResq0 On the other hand, I think that the time of CoffeeScript has passed. It made some sense before Babel but now, IMHO, it is only for Ruby developers who don't like the syntax of JavaScript.

At this point, JavaScript is inching closer and closer to just being assembly language for the web.

I think things will get very interesting indeed once WebAssembly really starts to be a real thing.

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