Pretty much, yeah. Today's web applications go through multiple forms of compilation and transformation. Conversion from ES6 modules to CommonJS, compilation

Pretty much, yeah. Today's web applications go through multiple forms of compilation and transformation. Conversion from ES6 modules to CommonJS, compilation of newer JS syntax into equivalent older syntax supported by more browsers, minification that renames symbols to cut down on the total byte size delivered, and bundling of hundreds of individual modules into a single output JS bundle (or possibly several code-split bundles). Because of that, debugging the delivered source as-is isn't feasible. Sourcemaps allow the browser's devtools to display the original source, and a developer can debug the code as it was before any compilation steps were applied. I saw a post a couple years back that suggested that DWARF debugging symbols could be used as an inspiration for improving sourcemaps: http://fitzgeraldnick.com/2015/06/19/source-maps-are-insufficient.html http://fitzgeraldnick.com/2015/06/19/source-maps-are-insuffi... .