Presentation on Babel

[hzoo]

I didn't prepare any slides for this, just ideas

Feel free to comment on questions you have about the project, etc!

Some ideas after talking with @littledan (don't need to cover all):

• Babel's relevance in the JS ecosystem (npm downloads, polls, etc)
• How Babel's goals intersect with TC39: the project doesn't have an agenda for any specific proposal. We want to improve the language process for developers via earlier feedback and usage.
• Overview of Babel's implementation/architecture, go over some packages and where to contribute on each, and the ecosystem)
• Proposal: proposal champions can also champion the Babel plugin implementation? (via a Babel plugin) - can also make educating/reviewing those changes a priority
  • champions can sign off on behavior and tests
• babel-preset-env and why it is important to implementers (if everyone uses Babel to compile down to ES5, no one uses native ES6). A lot of the code that will be run through implementations will be compiled Babel output (via users or libraries). (small point about the equivalent minifier)
• How should Babel "market" proposals to developers to use (how to balance the convenience of a a copy/paste (and forget) "Stage 0" preset vs explicitly asking them to use proposal plugins)
  • Name proposal plugins as experimental + independently versioned with semver (major version bumps, or just use 0.x while < Stage 4, or simply make a new package name) so TC39 is more confident with breaking changes
  • Create codemods to switch back if proposals are removed, or breaking changes to syntax (lots of work)?
  • Issues in Babel: Babylon Versioning babel/babylon#275, Rename stage presets to indicate the danger of using them babel/babel#4914, Revamping stage plugins (Removing the stage-x presets) babel/babel#4955
• How can Babel coordinate better with TC39, proposal champions, the community about it's status: maybe an equivalent repo (or fork) to tc39/agendas that includes the "Babel champion" and a link to the issue/PR/stage.
  • Vote for someone to help with that effort (@ljharb) as described in
• test262 integration with Babel