twilio-video.js VS babel-handbook

A good example of this is twilio-video, a JavaScript library that lets you add real time voice and video to your web applications (like Zoom). In this library, The Room always instantiates as an empty room. The class keeps a pointer to a LocalParticipant, (when you join a video chat room you are the LocalParticipant on your screen) but the LocalParticipant doesn't actually run or become instantiated yet until it connects and is finished subscribing to the room which is only possible in running code.

Their core objects like Participant implements this pattern extensively which enable consumers of the api to create an event driven video chat experiences in their apps.

Hi. I'm still digging, but in the meantime I think it's worth registering an issue at https://github.com/twilio/twilio-video.js/issues

twillo summary issue https://github.com/twilio/twilio-video.js/issues/941

For more information about building Babel plugins, check the Kent's Babel Handbook or this awesome Babel handbook by Jamie.

Babel does this by compiling down JavaScript code written with the latest standards into a version that will work everywhere today. This process is known as source-to-source compiling, also known as transpiring. Source: Jamie Kyle

I'll be honest, my approach to getting used to working with ASTs is a bit weird, but it worked for me. For some reason the thought of working with the TypeScript AST sounds really attractive to me. I'm sure most people recommend to start deep diving into babel first before getting used to working with an AST with the TypeScript compiler, but I started it the other way around. There is a great library called ts-morph that focuses on making it easier for developers to work with the TypeScript compiler. Learning hands on with ts-morph while getting used to their compiler api made babel much easier to understand without ever touching babel.

Those videos gave me a base for the task but I needed more sources to achieve it, so I read a lot of source code for other libraries built with babel-plugin-macros, read the plugin's authoring documentation and Jamie Kyle's Babel Handbook.

If you want to learn more about parsing, reading the code of an actual recursive parser might be a better idea. Esprima is a decent place to start if you're interested in JS grammar. Then you can look at the babel handbook to learn more about AST transformations. From there, the literature gets quite a bit more heavy. If you get this far and are willing to push further, you'll probably want to grab yourself a copy of the dragon book at a minimum.

Babel handbook