The ES6 conundrum – new article on SitePoint

I just released an article over on Sitepoint called The ES6 conundrum. In it, I am discussing the current issues we’re facing with using ES6:

• We can’t use it safely in the wild – as ES6 is a syntax change to the language, legacy browsers will see it as a JavaScript error and give our end users a broken experience. This violates the Priority of Constituencies design principle of HTML5
• We can use TypeScript or transpile it – which means we don’t debug the code we write but generated code. This can also lead to a lot of code bloat.
• We can feature test for it – which that can get complex quickly and we can’t assume that support for one features means others are supported
• Browser support for ES6 only makes a difference internally – as we transpile, we never send any ES6 to the browser
• The performance of ES6 is bad right now which is normal, as we have no way to tweak and test it in the browser and it offers much more complexity than ES5

All in all, we need to have a good think about ES6, and – to me – it feels we are at a turning point in web development. I will talk in more detail about this in my BrazilJS keynote in two weeks.

Read “The ES6 conundrum” on Sitepoint