Transpilers

Transpiling is a technique that combines both compilation and transformation. The idea is to write ES6-compatible code and use a tool that transpiles this code into a valid and equivalent ES5 code. We will be looking at the most complete and popular transpiler for ES6 called Babel (https://babeljs.io/).

Babel can be used in various ways. You can install it as a node module and invoke it from the command line or import it as a script in your web page. Babel's setup is exhaustive and well-documented at https://babeljs.io/docs/setup/. Babel also has a great Read-Eval-Print-Loop (REPL). We will Babel REPL for most of the examples in this chapter. An in-depth understanding of various ways in which Babel can be used is out of the scope of this module. However, I would urge you to start using Babel as part of your development workflow.

We will cover the most important part of ES6 specifications in this chapter. You should explore all the features of ES6 if possible and make them part of your development workflow.