Babel started as 6to5, which converted modern javascript to stuff that old browsers could understand.
It changed to Babel when the maintainers realized they were providing a great piece of software that would be useful long after browsers support es6.
Before version 6 Babel pretty much automatically just transpiled es6 to es5. After version 6, you have to specify what you want to transpiled. This often means just adding a reference to a preset in one of a number of ways: https://babeljs.io/docs/plugins/preset-latest/
It's still extremely useful, and the changes were necessary to keep the project ahead of the curve where it naturally lives due to its nature. For some reason, however, a large number of people got salty about having to add a line of configuration even though it is a useful and necessary feature.
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u/Geldan Dec 05 '16 edited Dec 05 '16
Babel started as 6to5, which converted modern javascript to stuff that old browsers could understand.
It changed to Babel when the maintainers realized they were providing a great piece of software that would be useful long after browsers support es6.
Before version 6 Babel pretty much automatically just transpiled es6 to es5. After version 6, you have to specify what you want to transpiled. This often means just adding a reference to a preset in one of a number of ways: https://babeljs.io/docs/plugins/preset-latest/
It's still extremely useful, and the changes were necessary to keep the project ahead of the curve where it naturally lives due to its nature. For some reason, however, a large number of people got salty about having to add a line of configuration even though it is a useful and necessary feature.
Edit: the name of 6to5