What are all these babel dependencies? What are each of them for and how do they differ? Which one should I use for my nodejs web app?

I have looked on the API website but is there any guide that puts these into simple human English?

I've been trying to set up some mocha tests and I stumbled upon that babel-core/register is from a different package (babel-core) than babel-register.... so what's up with that?

I've been using core-js with Babel for years in fairly large-scale projects where the bloat it produces has been somewhat disguised by the fact bundles are pretty big regardless. The pros of everything just working for a target environment outweigh any cons, and I think this is where core-js really shines.

However, I've recently started building some minimal NPM packages and it's been an eye-opener for me. So much so that I'm questioning whether core-js is fundamentally broken or if I'm just not fully understanding its purpose or how to leverage it properly.

Assume I'm targeting IE11 specifically and take the following example:

function trimmer(value) {
    return value.trim();
}

There is nothing fancy here; String.prototype.trim() has been supported since IE10.

Running this through Babel with core-js enabled appends require("core-js/modules/es.string.trim.js"); which then creates a chain reaction of dependency bloat. In fact if you use @rollup/plugin-commonjs to include these files in the bundle you end up with nearly 600 lines of code. Let that sink in. That's a 60000% increase for something that didn't even need polyfilling.

Even if a polyfill was required, why the bloat? There's a one-liner on MDN which probably covers 99.9% of cases.

Perhaps this is a bug, so let's move on to another example:

const test = {
    ...{
        foo: 'bar'
    }
};

Spread in object literals is not supported in IE11. That's fine.

If you forego core-js and simply use preset-env then a small block of helper code is injected to polyfill Object.assign(). The same is true when using TSC and compiling to <= ES5. You can take either of these outputs and run them in IE11 with no issues.

If you enable core-js the compiled output grows to over 1300 lines of code.

I'm clearly missing something as there is no way this is even remotely acceptable.

I'm wondering if anyone out there is/was in a similar position to me or can offer some advice.

The opinion I'm leaning toward at the moment is that core-js is great for large-scale projects where the overhead is mostly negated, and you have the peace of mind knowing that everything will just work. For smaller projects, if you're targeting a legacy environment then be conscious of the code you're writing (e.g. use a traditional for loop rather than for...of if it means avoiding 10 extra lines of polyfill code) and include case-specific polyfills manually if there's no other choice.

I'm currently evaluating different TypeScript transpilers for a new project I'm working on and am trying to decide between Babel, swc, and Sucrase. I’ve read up on each, but I would love to hear from others who have firsthand experience with these tools.

1. Performance: Which of these transpilers offers the best build performance? I'm particularly interested in faster compile times during development.

2. Ease of Use: Is there a significant difference in the ease of setup and configuration between these transpilers?

3. Feature Support: Considering Babel's comprehensive support for experimental features versus the more streamlined approaches of swc and Sucrase, how does this affect your day-to-day development? Do swc or Sucrase miss out on any crucial features?

4. Community and Support: Which of these tools has a more active community and better support? Have you encountered any issues, and how responsive were the maintainers?

Any insights, benchmarks, or personal experiences you could share would be greatly appreciated. Looking forward to your advice to help me make an informed decision.

Thank you!

I've looked into this topic for some time and it's confusing.

I only care about "modern browsers". And it seems like vite.js premise is - use esbuild and you dont need the core-js/babel - is that correct?

But couldn't there be a possibility that feature is supported in all browsers except like safari or firefox - and so even if browser is "modern" - it still would require a polyfill? so to me it seems like babel/core-js is still kind of good to have with vite.js?

What's your take on it? do you use babel with vite.js?

Just considering buying Babbel after I finish the French and the Danish courses on Duolingo, but it's very expensive so I want to hear from people that use it first.

I’m using babel (with preset-env) for “modern” es2015+ support with node 8 LTS.

My app has two entry points - babel-register-based, and another which calls the transpiled script in a dist folder. I require(“core-js/stable”) first in both. I’ve also set the following preset-env flags in my babel config useBuiltIns: “usage, corejs: 3”

Is this needed in a node environment? If so, why? Been running in circles on this one