Learning About the Babel Process

In the last couple of days I have been watching videos on how to use Babel in my workflow.

I have conflicting feelings on why I need to bother with Babel but am prepared to use it. The reason projects like Babel and Webpack came about is because web browsers are not keeping up with JavaScript development. There have been a number of updates to JavaScript and each browser seems to implement the new features in different timeframes.

Some browsers like Internet Explorer and Apple Safari are way behind in adopting the new features of JavaScript. I have tried using let with Safari and it failed so I need to dumb down to using var instead. Internet Explorer is worse as it has no provision for classes which are an essential part of JavaScript programming.

The new features are well worth using and provide a lot of functionality in JavaScript programming. The way around this conundrum is to transpile your code to older versions of JavaScript so they can reach web browsers without the latest JavaScript features.

Developers have come up with Babel and Webpack to allow you to do this. To use these tools you have to change your workflows and configuration and this is why I have been learning about these new tools. Surprisingly Microsoft products have also been changing their directory structures and the latest version of ASP.Net core has a very similar structure to what I am learning about with Babel and Webpack.