In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about the differences between compilers and build tools in TypeScript.

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Show Notes

03:38 - What is a TypeScript compiler?

Do we still need Babel / WebPack?

07:49 - Babel

Transpiler
It doesn’t do typechecking
New JS features that aren’t in TypeScript yet

10:22 - SWC

Rust based compiler
Doesn’t do type checking (yet)
https://github.com/swc-project/swc/issues/571

13:03 - Deno

Uses tsc right now
Might move to Rust
https://github.com/denoland/deno/issues/5432

13:36 - Surcase

https://github.com/alangpierce/sucrase#transforms

14:46 - ESBuild

Compiles, but doesn’t do any type checking
Fastest

17:39 - What about bundlers?

Parcel
Snowpack
Webpack
ESBuild
When might you still need a bundler?
- To handle different types of files that are non-standard
  - Like importing CSS and images
Treeshaking
Smaller bundle files
- Typescript can concatenate to a single file, or all .js files, but smaller / smarter bundles still need a tool for that
Polyfills
- Typescript does convert to syntax, but will not polyfill features
- Something like Promise
  - Syntax can be transpiled to old code
  - Methods like allSettled aren’t

Links

Syntax 324: TypeScript Fundamentals
Syntax 322: The Deno Show

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Hasty Treat - TypeScript Compilers and Build Tools

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