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There are many services that people only use as long as they're free or cheap, but stop using when a price tag appears or the price increases. Is it heresy now

There are many services that people only use as long as they're free or cheap, but stop using when a price tag appears or the price increases. Is it heresy now to propose that Babel maybe isn't THAT valuable?

ylyn 5y ago
Most people aren't even fully aware that Babel is part of their toolchain.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  And I thought that such awareness was a part of being good at one's job.
  - majjgepolja 5y ago
    Most people are not good at their job.
  - andrew_ 5y ago
    The dependency chain of modern Node projects is bewildering, and I wouldn't expect most developers to sift through the lockfiles and take note of every single dependency in the tree. (And I acknowledge this is an issue with the ecosystem)
  - rk06 5y ago
    babel is a very popular build tool, so most js build tool authors are aware of it. The problem is that they are very few. With tools like CRA, vue-cli, angualr cli, babel is even less visible.
arp242 5y ago
If you run a company with a monthly labour costs of $100k, and Babel increases efficiency by just 0.1%, then you get $1k of value from Babel every month. I'm no really involved in JS, but many people talk very highly of Babel, and I'm going to guess the actual efficiency increase is more than 0.1% for a lot of companies. $100k/monthly is perhaps 10-25 devs (depending on where it's located). So just $5/month sounds like a spectacular ROI to me; and 5,000 companies doing this already adds up to $50k/month. And that's just Babel, not talking about all the other tools and libraries people use for free; people build literally their entire businesses on stuff like Python. Surely Python provides value, no? Yet how much money flows back to Python from the average business?
- sokoloff 5y ago
  0.1% of $100K is $100, not $1K.
  - arp242 5y ago
    Oops! Math is hard >_< Still good ROI though.
- true_religion 5y ago
  If I had to choose to pay for a compiler I would pay for Typescript even if it were 3x more expensive and supported less plugins than Babel. Babel is something I really struggle to not use, but find myself forced to use at times. I’d much rather plunge money into any competing compiler to get it feature compatible.

ylyn 5y ago

Most people aren't even fully aware that Babel is part of their toolchain.

WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
And I thought that such awareness was a part of being good at one's job.
- majjgepolja 5y ago
  Most people are not good at their job.
- andrew_ 5y ago
  The dependency chain of modern Node projects is bewildering, and I wouldn't expect most developers to sift through the lockfiles and take note of every single dependency in the tree. (And I acknowledge this is an issue with the ecosystem)
- rk06 5y ago
  babel is a very popular build tool, so most js build tool authors are aware of it. The problem is that they are very few. With tools like CRA, vue-cli, angualr cli, babel is even less visible.

arp242 5y ago

If you run a company with a monthly labour costs of $100k, and Babel increases efficiency by just 0.1%, then you get $1k of value from Babel every month. I'm no really involved in JS, but many people talk very highly of Babel, and I'm going to guess the actual efficiency increase is more than 0.1% for a lot of companies. $100k/monthly is perhaps 10-25 devs (depending on where it's located). So just $5/month sounds like a spectacular ROI to me; and 5,000 companies doing this already adds up to $50k/month. And that's just Babel, not talking about all the other tools and libraries people use for free; people build literally their entire businesses on stuff like Python. Surely Python provides value, no? Yet how much money flows back to Python from the average business?

sokoloff 5y ago
0.1% of $100K is $100, not $1K.
- arp242 5y ago
  Oops! Math is hard >_< Still good ROI though.
true_religion 5y ago
If I had to choose to pay for a compiler I would pay for Typescript even if it were 3x more expensive and supported less plugins than Babel. Babel is something I really struggle to not use, but find myself forced to use at times. I’d much rather plunge money into any competing compiler to get it feature compatible.