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Hasty Treat - TypeScript Compilers and Build Tools

Feb 15, 2021 · 22 min
0:00-22:31

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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?

07:49 - Babel

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

10:22 - SWC

13:03 - Deno

13:36 - Surcase

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
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