That is a wonderful question and is exactly the sort of thing that should be on the Babel website. You’ll find no such explanation or even a summary of trade offs that come with adding Babel to your app.
It’s assumed that if you want to support older browsers, the next logical step is to add Babel…forever. An incredible trick happens here, where the developer thinks they added the magic package which only bears a “tax” on the poor sap who’s stuck on Internet Explorer, presumably running eye watering amounts of polyfills on 32 bit limits of RAM.
In my opinion, the Babel team should start looking for a strategy that aligns with a world of evergreen browsers, and untangle the web of feature polyfills from syntax transformations.
It’s also not too wild to think that Babel is a symptom of a larger problem. JavaScript lacks a versioning mechanism when new features are added. A more self-aware Babel could use their connections with the TC39 team do what all successful JavaScript libraries do: become part of the standard library a la jQuery and CoffeeScript.
Alternatively, reconsider the velocity that Babel introduces to the JavaScript ecosystem. These tools might actually be self perpetuating their existence by making new features so readily accessible.
It’s assumed that if you want to support older browsers, the next logical step is to add Babel…forever. An incredible trick happens here, where the developer thinks they added the magic package which only bears a “tax” on the poor sap who’s stuck on Internet Explorer, presumably running eye watering amounts of polyfills on 32 bit limits of RAM.
In my opinion, the Babel team should start looking for a strategy that aligns with a world of evergreen browsers, and untangle the web of feature polyfills from syntax transformations.
It’s also not too wild to think that Babel is a symptom of a larger problem. JavaScript lacks a versioning mechanism when new features are added. A more self-aware Babel could use their connections with the TC39 team do what all successful JavaScript libraries do: become part of the standard library a la jQuery and CoffeeScript.
Alternatively, reconsider the velocity that Babel introduces to the JavaScript ecosystem. These tools might actually be self perpetuating their existence by making new features so readily accessible.