Front end engineer, here. Not very experienced, less than 10 years exp.
Dumb question - why do we still need compilers like Babel and SWC to compile our es6 (excluding TS) to...whatever version of js the compiler is targeting? Are browsers still so out of sync with each other that we still need to compile to es5? If yes, wouldn't it be more worthwhile for the front end community, including TC39 and every major browser engine developer (google, apple, mozilla, etc), to focus on the base implementation (engine) so they are no longer so out of sync? The most popular browser are based on open source engines anyway.
Don't get me wrong, I am sure there is a good reason for all this rust tooling - faster compilation does not hurt, but it seems inefficient to have an intermediate compiler (Babel / swc/ TS/ etc) that creates deployable code that will eventually be interpreted by the user's JS engine (V8 / webkit / gecko) anyway.
A standardized engine seems the way to go and it seems like we are going in that direction with only a handful of JS engines in use today.
Dumb question - why do we still need compilers like Babel and SWC to compile our es6 (excluding TS) to...whatever version of js the compiler is targeting? Are browsers still so out of sync with each other that we still need to compile to es5? If yes, wouldn't it be more worthwhile for the front end community, including TC39 and every major browser engine developer (google, apple, mozilla, etc), to focus on the base implementation (engine) so they are no longer so out of sync? The most popular browser are based on open source engines anyway.
Don't get me wrong, I am sure there is a good reason for all this rust tooling - faster compilation does not hurt, but it seems inefficient to have an intermediate compiler (Babel / swc/ TS/ etc) that creates deployable code that will eventually be interpreted by the user's JS engine (V8 / webkit / gecko) anyway.
A standardized engine seems the way to go and it seems like we are going in that direction with only a handful of JS engines in use today.