Babel (Formerly 6to5) VS swc

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node 'node_modules/.bin/jest' '/Users/satparkash/code/test-app/src/A pp.test.tsx' -t 'App' FAIL src/App.test.tsx ● Test suite failed to run SyntaxError: /Users/satparkash/code/test-app/src/App.test.tsx: Support for the experimental syntax 'jsx' isn't currently enabled (6:12): 4 | describe('App', () => { 5 | it('should work as expected', () => { > 6 | render(); | ^ 7 | }); 8 | }); 9 | Add @babel/preset-react (https://github.com/babel/babel/tree/main/packages/babel-preset-react) to the 'presets' section of your Babel config to enable transformation. If you want to leave it as-is, add @babel/plugin-syntax-jsx (https://github.com/babel/babel/tree/main/packages/babel-plugin-syntax-jsx) to the 'plugins' section to enable parsing. Test Suites: 1 failed, 1 total Tests: 0 total Snapshots: 0 total Time: 0.278 s Ran all test suites matching /\/Users\/satparkash\/code\/test-app\/src\/App.test.tsx/i with tests matching "App".

Webpack (Babel) - https://babel.dev/

I do appreciate your transparency, though I disagree with the sentiment that I’m arguing from a position of bad faith.

It’s a self-evident fact that the Babel team has not shown a moment of interest in lowering their role in the JavaScript ecosystem to anything short of kingmakers. Have a gander at their GitHub README and what do we see?[1]

- “Babel is a compiler for writing next generation JavaScript.” Indefinitely.

- Over a dozen sponsor logos. An embarrassment of riches.

- A literal audio recording of a song in praise of the project.

The Babel team has a well documented history of their priorities[2], emphasizing the need for a modular approach that has no exit strategy[3]. At best, we have a case of accidental entrenchment and long term dependence on the Babel brewing as early as 2017![4]

Compare this infinite circus to the humble but popular Normalize.css, which has the express purpose to stop existing.[5]

If the Babel team wants to raise some money, they can start by putting a plan together that would codify an exit strategy. It’s certainly more noble than their current plan of barnacling on to every NPM package…

- [1] https://github.com/babel/babel

- [2] https://github.com/babel/notes

- [3] https://github.com/babel/notes/blob/master/2016/2016-07/july...

- [4] https://github.com/babel/notes/blob/master/2017/2017-04/apri...

- [5] https://nicolasgallagher.com/about-normalize-css/

The problem was I had used some new code, Javascript's replaceAll(), that is unsupported by older browsers. And, the setup I have to automatically fix such issues (called babel) is out of date. So, while this problem appears to be resolved there, I hadn't updated that in awhile.

babel-loader(v9.1.0): allows transpiling JavaScript files using Babel and webpack.

created 6 years ago to solve the specific problem of managing the Babel repo packages

https://github.com/babel/babel/discussions/13013 maybe this could help

First, we switched the default compiler for new projects from Babel to SWC (Speedy Web Compiler). SWC is dramatically faster than Babel and requires zero configuration. We’ll continue to support Babel in any project currently using it.

SWC

As the reference explains “**SWC** (Speedy Web Compiler) is an extensible Rust-based platform that can be used for both compilation and bundling. Using SWC with Nest CLI is a great and simple way to significantly speed up your development process.”

This is specifically about breaking the myth that performing expensive self-contained operations (e.g, parsing GraphQL) in a native extension (C, Rust, etc.) is always faster than the interpreted language.

The JS ecosystem has the same problem, people think rewriting everything in Rust will be a magic fix. In practice, there's always the problem highlighted in the post (transitioning is expensive, causes optimization bailouts), as well as the cost of actually getting the results back into Node-land. This is why SWC abandoned the JS API for writing plugins - constantly bouncing back and forth while traversing AST nodes was even slower than Babel (e.g https://github.com/swc-project/swc/issues/1392#issuecomment-...)

Why Speedy Web Compiler ?

FTA is a TypeScript static analysis tool built on the speedy foundations of swc. FTA is fast; capable of analyzing more than 150 files per second on typical hardware, it offers a powerful addition to your code quality toolkit.

Very cool! I'm curious, is this intended for dev tooling?

For example, I could see this (or something similar) being useful as the engine for a typescript language server that would be faster than the standard one

But if it's not aimed at 1:1 with tsc, would it be intended more for something like swc[1]?

Or what would you expect people to use this for, besides just being a cool project to learn from?

[1] https://github.com/swc-project/swc

This is... good news, but I still cannot fathom using the default Typescript compiler for regular development. Seriously, leave the type-checking to your IDE and CICD chain, and switch to using tsx (https://www.npmjs.com/package/tsx) or swc (https://swc.rs/) and you will _immediately_ notice the difference in speed and productivity.