4 ms·

How big of a problem is it to change from babel to some alternative? I'm thinking of a possibly bigger disadvantage should that need to happen. I'm genuinely as

How big of a problem is it to change from babel to some alternative? I'm thinking of a possibly bigger disadvantage should that need to happen. I'm genuinely asking, since I'm not familiar with js tool chains.

captainmuon 5y ago
True, I guess if a big company used it they probably could fund it from pocket money, rather than spending more money on switching. Sad that people have to write a "we're running out of money" blog post to make that happen.
- okamiueru 5y ago
  There is also a separate aspect, that this also has do with unawareness, and not just excess stinginess. I might speak for only myself, but to a much larger extent that I'd like to admit, I take work and maintenance of open source projects for granted. Maybe it's the disconnect caused by large businesses properly funding some of them, with an erroneous assumption of the level of maintenance others require. If something is core to a major tool chain then I just, sad to say, assume it's well funded, either by larger companies or universities. Trying to think of an example, LLVM seems integral to a lot of progress on web functionality, just EMSCripten alone makes that case. This in turn is sponsored by most of the major tech companies [1]. Whether the same foundation also funds emscripten, I couldn't find out. https://foundation.llvm.org/docs/sponsors/ https://foundation.llvm.org/docs/sponsors/ I think my point is, if anything, if you have a open source project that requires having several full times employees, it might be high time to create a non/profit and work on getting funding. The post they wrote, and the visibility it gets can be an example of a doing just that, albeit maybe just a temporary fix.
wildpeaks 5y ago
I successfully removed it years ago because Typescript replaced everything I was using Babel for, things even build way faster and I even got Intellisense autocompletion and refactoring as bonus.
- nsonha 5y ago
  I doubt typescript is faster than babel with all the static analysis it does. In fact it's typical for projects to use typescript as a check in CI and actually build with babel, for speed. Fast alternatives to babel are things like esbuild and swc
  - wildpeaks 5y ago
    Typechecks are optional, just use transpile-only mode for the build: it merely removes the type annotations, it's fast. You can have the best of both worlds: Intellisense based on types in the editor yet fast transpile in the build.

captainmuon 5y ago

True, I guess if a big company used it they probably could fund it from pocket money, rather than spending more money on switching. Sad that people have to write a "we're running out of money" blog post to make that happen.

okamiueru 5y ago
There is also a separate aspect, that this also has do with unawareness, and not just excess stinginess. I might speak for only myself, but to a much larger extent that I'd like to admit, I take work and maintenance of open source projects for granted. Maybe it's the disconnect caused by large businesses properly funding some of them, with an erroneous assumption of the level of maintenance others require. If something is core to a major tool chain then I just, sad to say, assume it's well funded, either by larger companies or universities. Trying to think of an example, LLVM seems integral to a lot of progress on web functionality, just EMSCripten alone makes that case. This in turn is sponsored by most of the major tech companies [1]. Whether the same foundation also funds emscripten, I couldn't find out. https://foundation.llvm.org/docs/sponsors/ https://foundation.llvm.org/docs/sponsors/ I think my point is, if anything, if you have a open source project that requires having several full times employees, it might be high time to create a non/profit and work on getting funding. The post they wrote, and the visibility it gets can be an example of a doing just that, albeit maybe just a temporary fix.

wildpeaks 5y ago

I successfully removed it years ago because Typescript replaced everything I was using Babel for, things even build way faster and I even got Intellisense autocompletion and refactoring as bonus.

nsonha 5y ago
I doubt typescript is faster than babel with all the static analysis it does. In fact it's typical for projects to use typescript as a check in CI and actually build with babel, for speed. Fast alternatives to babel are things like esbuild and swc
- wildpeaks 5y ago
  Typechecks are optional, just use transpile-only mode for the build: it merely removes the type annotations, it's fast. You can have the best of both worlds: Intellisense based on types in the editor yet fast transpile in the build.