7 ms·

It's really time to start distributing ES6 via npm. All current browsers support ES6. It's now generally faster than equivalent ES5, it minifies better, tooling

It's really time to start distributing ES6 via npm. All current browsers support ES6. It's now generally faster than equivalent ES5, it minifies better, tooling is better, etc. It's the app that should compile all the code to run in the target environment if needed. This is what we've done in the new Polymer CLI / polymer-build: we compile all dependencies but only if necessary.

STRML 10y ago
I agree that this is the future. But that will mean telling everyone that they should now run their node_modules through Babel - no inconsequential feat, given the size of the code that must now be transpiled.
- untog 10y ago
  It's not just that - is JSX part of ES6? It isn't, but a lot of pre-Babel transpiled code uses it. So people would need to transpile to ES6 for distribution, then to ES5 when someone uses the library. Messy.
  - spankalee 10y ago
    Don't distribute JSX, it's not JavaScript. Distribute what engines actually support.
    - untog 10y ago
      A nice sentiment, but you could say the exact same thing about ES6. "What engines actually support" is a pretty fuzzy metric.
Silhouette 10y ago
All current browsers support ES6. That's debatable, particularly when you factor in bugs. However, even if they did, it seems unwise to assume that all relevant users for all or even most projects will be on the latest evergreen browsers. Several large groups, including business users on IE and mobile users on slightly older devices, probably won't be. I know there's a certain type of web developer who would love for everyone to have updated their browser within the last five minutes so all the new toys are available universally, but that has never been the nature of web development. Deliberately breaking major infrastructure is just going to make JS development even more screwed up than it already is.
- debaserab2 10y ago
  This is a common theme I'm noticing a lot lately. Meanwhile, I check my product's browser breakdown and IE9/10 is still too significant to ignore. There's just no way our customers would be okay with this. Many are still locked on older IE versions due to (bad) corporate policies. I can't strongarm them into upgrading. Which leads me to wonder: are developers that are so willing to advocate breaking compatibility with older browsers actually deploying real sites that have normal representative user audiences? Or is this an insular group of developers mostly making things for each other?
  - Silhouette 10y ago
    I'm afraid this culture is now endemic in web development. Everyone expects everything to be free, so the people building most of the tools, from the libraries to the browsers themselves, are mostly either doing it for fun as an amateur or doing it professionally in order to support something that does bring in revenues. Neither of these necessarily implies writing or maintaining ideal tools to support web development more widely; any wider benefit is largely coincidental. Unfortunately, because so much of the influence is now concentrated with so few organisations or even individual people, and most of them are aligned on this, it's going to be difficult to return to a more widely supportive ecosystem now.
    - marcus_holmes 10y ago
      Agree. This is Maker's Triangle stuff (Good, Cheap or Fast, pick two). Everyone is picking Cheap and Fast, and not only Cheap, but Free, so the amount of Good left in this stuff is non-existent. If there's no Good chosen, then it all gets crufty and full of tech debt. So someone else thinks they can do better, and starts developing a replacement. In order to get traction, though, they need to make it Free and develop it Fast, so after a while they start taking a few short-cuts, and round we go again. I have faith that it'll settle down eventually, but until then...
      - matt4077 10y ago

STRML 10y ago

I agree that this is the future. But that will mean telling everyone that they should now run their node_modules through Babel - no inconsequential feat, given the size of the code that must now be transpiled.

untog 10y ago
It's not just that - is JSX part of ES6? It isn't, but a lot of pre-Babel transpiled code uses it. So people would need to transpile to ES6 for distribution, then to ES5 when someone uses the library. Messy.
- spankalee 10y ago
  Don't distribute JSX, it's not JavaScript. Distribute what engines actually support.
  - untog 10y ago
    A nice sentiment, but you could say the exact same thing about ES6. "What engines actually support" is a pretty fuzzy metric.

Silhouette 10y ago

All current browsers support ES6. That's debatable, particularly when you factor in bugs. However, even if they did, it seems unwise to assume that all relevant users for all or even most projects will be on the latest evergreen browsers. Several large groups, including business users on IE and mobile users on slightly older devices, probably won't be. I know there's a certain type of web developer who would love for everyone to have updated their browser within the last five minutes so all the new toys are available universally, but that has never been the nature of web development. Deliberately breaking major infrastructure is just going to make JS development even more screwed up than it already is.

debaserab2 10y ago
This is a common theme I'm noticing a lot lately. Meanwhile, I check my product's browser breakdown and IE9/10 is still too significant to ignore. There's just no way our customers would be okay with this. Many are still locked on older IE versions due to (bad) corporate policies. I can't strongarm them into upgrading. Which leads me to wonder: are developers that are so willing to advocate breaking compatibility with older browsers actually deploying real sites that have normal representative user audiences? Or is this an insular group of developers mostly making things for each other?
- Silhouette 10y ago
  I'm afraid this culture is now endemic in web development. Everyone expects everything to be free, so the people building most of the tools, from the libraries to the browsers themselves, are mostly either doing it for fun as an amateur or doing it professionally in order to support something that does bring in revenues. Neither of these necessarily implies writing or maintaining ideal tools to support web development more widely; any wider benefit is largely coincidental. Unfortunately, because so much of the influence is now concentrated with so few organisations or even individual people, and most of them are aligned on this, it's going to be difficult to return to a more widely supportive ecosystem now.
  - marcus_holmes 10y ago
    Agree. This is Maker's Triangle stuff (Good, Cheap or Fast, pick two). Everyone is picking Cheap and Fast, and not only Cheap, but Free, so the amount of Good left in this stuff is non-existent. If there's no Good chosen, then it all gets crufty and full of tech debt. So someone else thinks they can do better, and starts developing a replacement. In order to get traction, though, they need to make it Free and develop it Fast, so after a while they start taking a few short-cuts, and round we go again. I have faith that it'll settle down eventually, but until then...
    - matt4077 10y ago