> Direct programming JavScript in a browser is dead Wrong. There will be times where you're not the one who decides the stack. If you're thrown into a legacy c

> Direct programming JavScript in a browser is dead Wrong. There will be times where you're not the one who decides the stack. If you're thrown into a legacy codebase, where's your Babel now? If you're thrown into a framework like Wordpress, where all you need is bits of jQuery, would you really need a full-blown transpiler setup? > npm allows you to include various libraries in your code and it's not restricted to node.js - you can include them in your browser apps too. You missed the part where 1) You're not in control of npm's directory structure (they're always in node_modules which is always beside the package.json) and 2) Most setups using npm in the frontend use some form of build phase, which may not fit on all projects. > do not do any programming in JavaScript without a first class IDE. Not really. A sufficiently plugged Sublime Text can do almost the same task. Just add in Sublime Linter, Sublime Linter ES Lint, HTML Prettify (which also prettifies JS and CSS), a correctly configured .eslintrc, .editorconfig, .jsbeautifyrc in the root of the project and we're in business. With that, you have error reporting and code formatter. That takes care of the trivial stuff. Everything else, discipline.