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Harriet Ryder
16,885 PointsES2015 - can you really use it in web development?
Hi, I've been learning about ES2015 recently and some of its new features but I was just wondering - would you actually want to use it in web development? It seems browser support is so low that you'd want to avoid it.
And what is the thinking behind pushing out a new version every year, as is the plan, if browsers are so slow to catch up that you can never really use the latest version?
Is it just for use on back-end scripts? Does it work okay on those?
2 Answers
Elliot Alderton
11,955 PointsHi Harriet
You can write ES2015 and use babel (https://babeljs.io/) to compile it to ES5. That way you can use all the latest features of ES2015 and not have to worry about browser support.
Elliot
Harriet Ryder
16,885 PointsGreat - thanks so much!
Iain Simmons
Treehouse Moderator 32,305 PointsIain Simmons
Treehouse Moderator 32,305 PointsI've been using Babel and ES2015 in just about every JavaScript project, course, tutorial or whatever I've been working on, even when it doesn't call for it.
I think precompiling with tools like Babel is just the reality of working with something as fast-changing as JavaScript.
Chris Shaw
26,676 PointsChris Shaw
26,676 PointsThe method used by Babel is transpiling, you can read more about the difference at the below link.
https://www.stevefenton.co.uk/2012/11/compiling-vs-transpiling/