Dear vanilla JavaScript users, which version do you use? Transpiler?

#javascript #node #discuss #webdev

This aligns with not only Node version, but also which web browsers do you target.

Do you transpile JavaScript (or something else, like Kotlin) to JavaScript at all?

Also, on Node.js - commonjs or ESM? Commonjs style can be easily used as node index.js or node ., but is running ESM really that more complex, considering Deno is even worse?

node --experimental-modules server.js

# if you want to use Chrome inspector
node --experimental-modules --inspect server.js

# without precompiling with Babel
babel-node server.js

# ts-node that probably will always run
ts-node -O '{"module":"commonjs","noExplicitAny":false}' -r tsconfig-paths/register server.ts

deno --allow-net server.ts

I feel like TypeScript is waging war with JavaScript. If it ever add non-JavaScript compilation target, it would be Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish. So Microsoft-like. I feel like people are forced to choose either.

TypeScript is just a near-zero-config to-JavaScript compiler; with only single-install (and Babel is just the opposite of complexity). Not to mention that Babel is not the only JavaScript compiler.

Also, in VSCode, it is helpful to have jsconfig.json, no matter which JavaScript do you choose.

Top comments (3)

Conrad Sollitt • Dec 16 '20

For Vanilla JavaScript I just minimize if no build is required and I use Terser for Modern Code and `uglify-js' for ES5 code.

terser.org/ - Minimizer for Modern Code
github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS - ES5 Code

Here is an example I wrote (fully custom script) that handles 3 types of code:

Web Components (Modern JS) - Using Terser, minification only
React Components
- Terser to minimize build targetting modern browsers
- Babel Standalone (smaller version of babel intended for Brwoser) to target older browers
- uglify-js to minify ES5 code in the project

With the custom script I simply run npm run build and it created *.min.js of each file and handles the React Components. This is a large project though so I think this would be overkill for the vast majority of projects, but individual parts of it can apply to many projects.

github.com/dataformsjs/dataformsjs...