I spent a lot of time at my last job writing JavaScript. We had a set version of node, we had our dependencies more-or-less steady, and we put our heads down and coded. I left feeling like I knew JavaScript! Wheee!
Then I got started with React at my next job. Cool sh*t, no doubt. But ES5 components led to ES6 class-based components. When I tried to consume that ES6 code I would get invalid keyword errors on things like class and import. Huh? transpile it with Babel! Oh, okay...
Then I got into mobx (<- totes dig it!), with all it's decorators and what not (oh Java, I do miss you a little). But when I tried to run that code, I'd get errors about @ being totally uncool. Babel to the rescue!
stage-0, stage-1, transform-decorators-legacy, ...
Woah. WTF language am I writing in now? Some quick duckduckgoes imply that I'm using proposed JavaScript syntax that hasn't even been approved yet. When I look at the code running in the browser, it's all translated into, what I think is, ES5 (which is also es2015?). Okay, enough trivia, there's work to do! It's transpiling successfully? Good, head down...
Anyhoo, I 💕 the functional programming experience JavaScript continues to offer, and I love that the code is so portable in this browser/electron world. But seriously, you need a guru to fully understand:
- the state of the JS language
- the dialect you're writing in
- the translations that babel is performing (and how to configure it)
- interpreting the translation when debugging at runtime
Wowzers. I write JS, you may write JS, but I bet yours and mine look a helluvalot different. And I bet my code can't be pasted into your codebase without syntax errors. And to me, that's just kinda like ... woah.
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