5 ms·

Are they actually complaining that using a transpiler needs configuration? Also if-it-ain't-broke-don't-upgrade-it? If they liked Babel v5 why jump on v6?

atemerev 11y ago
Because if you don't upgrade, you'll be living with unmaintainable corpse soon. Most of modern software depends on community efforts, and when you are behind the front lines, moving forward becomes increasingly harder. (Got myself burned with Babel6, too)
- StillBored 11y ago
  This is only true if you pick really immature technologies. If you write your web back-end in C/SQL its likely that it will run unchanged for the next couple decades. If you write your web back-end in PHP, it will probably run with only minor changes for the next 5-10 years. If you write your web back-end in node.js, you will be lucky if it runs without modification in 6 months. Just because something is cool, or easy and fast to bootstrap doesn't make it the best choice for a long term successful project. Its like people used to say about delphi vs visual basic, "Delphi makes the easy stuff easier, and the hard stuff doable. Visual basic does the easy stuff for you, but makes the hard stuff impossible." I think that applies to a huge number of recent "technologies". Careful use of make, RPM/deb and kickstart will solve all the same problems as $COOL_NEW_TECHNOLOGY. It might take a little longer up front, but 5 years down the line when your project is a million lines of code across multiple platforms and languages with differing dependency tree's/etc you will be thankful you didn't tie yourself to a build environment designed for a particular language/enviroment. Especially, if said technology gets abandoned and you end up maintaining it in-house.
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BinaryIdiot 11y ago
Why does a transpiler need a configuration? Isn't the whole point of it to transform one set of script to another set? Seems to be a very basic set of default configuration items could be (and should be) integrated into said application and allow advanced users to override. But yeah in node land if you don't upgrade to the latest major you're going to be left behind in bug and security fixes (good luck finding projects with actually maintained LTS branches and if they exist they're almost always the previous major version and nothing further back).
- spankalee 11y ago
  That whole point of Babel 6's design is that it can't know what "set" of script to compile to. The user necessarily has to know where they want their code to run.
  - BinaryIdiot 11y ago
    The design the fine but the level of intuitiveness is absolutely not fine. Not shipping the default transformations that the vast majority of developers use? Or really shipping ANY of them and thus making your initial download not usable until you download something else? Inexcusable. Shipping a product that is incomplete unless you get something else should simply not be acceptable in this day.

atemerev 11y ago

Because if you don't upgrade, you'll be living with unmaintainable corpse soon. Most of modern software depends on community efforts, and when you are behind the front lines, moving forward becomes increasingly harder. (Got myself burned with Babel6, too)

StillBored 11y ago
This is only true if you pick really immature technologies. If you write your web back-end in C/SQL its likely that it will run unchanged for the next couple decades. If you write your web back-end in PHP, it will probably run with only minor changes for the next 5-10 years. If you write your web back-end in node.js, you will be lucky if it runs without modification in 6 months. Just because something is cool, or easy and fast to bootstrap doesn't make it the best choice for a long term successful project. Its like people used to say about delphi vs visual basic, "Delphi makes the easy stuff easier, and the hard stuff doable. Visual basic does the easy stuff for you, but makes the hard stuff impossible." I think that applies to a huge number of recent "technologies". Careful use of make, RPM/deb and kickstart will solve all the same problems as $COOL_NEW_TECHNOLOGY. It might take a little longer up front, but 5 years down the line when your project is a million lines of code across multiple platforms and languages with differing dependency tree's/etc you will be thankful you didn't tie yourself to a build environment designed for a particular language/enviroment. Especially, if said technology gets abandoned and you end up maintaining it in-house.

deleted 11y ago

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BinaryIdiot 11y ago

Why does a transpiler need a configuration? Isn't the whole point of it to transform one set of script to another set? Seems to be a very basic set of default configuration items could be (and should be) integrated into said application and allow advanced users to override. But yeah in node land if you don't upgrade to the latest major you're going to be left behind in bug and security fixes (good luck finding projects with actually maintained LTS branches and if they exist they're almost always the previous major version and nothing further back).

spankalee 11y ago
That whole point of Babel 6's design is that it can't know what "set" of script to compile to. The user necessarily has to know where they want their code to run.
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago
  The design the fine but the level of intuitiveness is absolutely not fine. Not shipping the default transformations that the vast majority of developers use? Or really shipping ANY of them and thus making your initial download not usable until you download something else? Inexcusable. Shipping a product that is incomplete unless you get something else should simply not be acceptable in this day.