Nolan LawsonApr 23, 2017

I've always been skeptical of the JS community's mania for Babel plugins and compile-to-JS languages, and honestly, working with the Mastodon codebase and trying to shrink a 2.6MB JS bundle, I feel like my worst fears have been realized.

I've decomposed all of Mastodon's Babel presets into these plugins. If I remove a single one, I get some inscrutable error apparently caused by some other plugin in the pipeline. Feels like a big Jenga tower. 😞 #MastodonPerf

Show threadterribleplan

@nolan What is your goal in removing babel plugins? Theoretically there is little/no output overhead for using a plugin, as you would need to write similar code to what they spit out in order to get working code across browsers.

I might be able to help some, as I make a living as one of those babel maniacs.

Apr 23, 2017 at 8:01pmWeb
Show threadNolan LawsonApr 23, 2017
@terribleplan See the rest of my thread; this stuff can really add up. I also gave a talk about this. :) https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/msedgedev/nolanlaw-web-perf-crisis