Babel team opens up to devs
in an AMA on Hashnode
Greetings fellow medium readers.
Babel team were the hosts for an eventful AMA on Hashnode and it turned out to be an answer-fest of sorts. Developers asked the Babel team a variety of questions and received satisfying answers.
For those of you who are not aware of what Babel is or what it does, Logan Smyth, a core contributor for Babel describes it as
A tool for transforming source code from one form to another, with the most popular use-case being converting newer JavaScript syntax into older syntax to support older browsers and environments.
Babel Fanboys pandered to them (duh!, they’re awesome) as well as raised some important topics for discussion. Other budding devs discussed a wide array of topics ranging from why Babel changed their name(they were originally called ‘6to5’) to the current issues they are dealing with.
Now, you want to know why they changed their name, don’t you? 😉
Well, they were compiling more than just 6to5. Babel was also compiling 7to5, 8to5, ES2015 to ES5, etc. But why ‘Babel’? Their new name has a little bit of mystery and myth behind it. In the book of Genesis, a monument called the ‘tower of Babel’ exists which is supposed to be the origin myth behind why people from different parts of the world converse in different languages.
Yes, even I was filled with awe when I came to know about this. Detailed story on the nomenclature can be found here.
Having a full time job and then taking care of Babel at the same time is quite a tiring but enjoyable task according to the core team.
So what does one need to do to be a part of the core maintainers team?
According to Henry Zhu, a definite requirement is an interest to contribute to the project as a whole and not just focus on one’s own issues and bugs. As a warning (not a deterrent), he also candidly tells us that being a maintainer is not exactly glorious as it is more of project management and comparatively less coding. But it worked out fine for him as it was an opportunity to learn JavaScript and interact with the community among others.
There are also a set of prerequisites to be a part of the babel team. You can find them here.
How do they manage full time jobs and find time to contribute to OSS?
Its a pretty tough and hectic task to be doing both and finding the right balance is the key according to them. However, some of them have phases where they don’t contribute and they are fine with that because of the confidence that Babel is in good hands.
Four hosts answered this question and they pretty much echoed each others sentiments. Tiring but fun!
Babel’s codebase is huge! In addition to that, none of the team members work with just Babel, they have to work to do on other fronts as well. And one can’t imagine the number of PR’s they have to review.
So, how does the team manage such a huge codebase and other related activities?
Henry admits that it is indeed impossible to know everything thats going on in the codebase. The fact that it is open source just adds to the confusion as it is a case of too many cooks (these cooks make one hell of a broth though!). So what they try to do is divide the work and have different leads for different areas determined based on their interest and work history.
To know more on how they review PR’s and divide their work, click here!
A lot of other interesting questions got some excellent answers!
- Is babel-core/register production ready?
- Where can I learn about how Babel works?
- Is the project formally sponsored?
- Which upcoming spec features are you most excited about?
- How to prevent people from using non-standard / unstable plugins in production?
- What are the biggest problems Babel is experiencing right now?
If this got you going, do check out the complete AMA ↓
Thanks a lot Henry Zhu, Logan Smyth, Justin Ridgewell, Daniel Tschinder, Sven Sauleau, and Brian Ng for taking time out of your busy schedules and offering a helping hand to the developer community. You guys are super awesome!
If you want to help them out, here is how you can get in touch with them.
Hope you had a good time going through the summary.
Thats all folks. Geek out and happy coding. 🤓
Over and out 👋
