14 DAY TRIAL // JavaScript as a programming language has been for many years stuck in the ES5.1 era, but now Ecma International has released a new version of the ECMAScript (JavaScript) language which will slowly start rolling out to users: ES6, also officially known as ECMAScript 2015.
While browser manufacturers will take a while to implement the whole final standard in their engines, developers are quite the impatient beasts.
We say this because ES6 has been used for many months in production-level applications, long before it ever reached a final stage.
This was done using special compilers that take ES6 JavaScript code and convert it to the standard (back-then) ES5.1 syntax.
One of these compilers (also known as transpilers) is Babel, a tool that's been seeing more and more adoption with developers and big companies alike.
Currently, the Babel team boasts its tool is being used in the world's largest tech companies, like Yahoo, Mozilla, PayPal, Netflix, Reddit, Soundcloud, Spotify, Vimeo, Ghost, Facebook, GitHub, Flipboard, Evernote, Envato, and AirBnB.
Babel has the best ES6 compatibility rate out of all *-to-JavaScript transpilers
If you check this ES6 compatibility table where various compile-to-JavaScript compilers are compared, you'll see Babel outdoes Google's Traceur, and even Microsoft's TypeScript.
Since Babel also ships with built-in support for Facebook's React framework and its custom JSX syntax, developers also find it easier to implement Babel with their applications.
While these are quite enticing features for any developer that's looking for a faster and more efficient way of writing modern JavaScript but still have it run on older browsers, non-standard situations will always pop up.
For these cases, Babel provides a plugin system which developers can use to build their own custom code transformations that will be executed when the Babel compiler runs its regular routine.
Overall Babel will help drive the JavaScript developer community towards the ES6 standard at a much more accelerated rate, even long before browsers end up implementing it.