polyfills

In this episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk about what polyfills, transpiling, and monkey patching mean, how and when to do it, and libraries that can help you out.

Show Notes

• 00:10 Welcome
• 01:07 Toast follow up
• 02:45 What are transpiling, ponyfill, polyfill, and monkey patching
• TC39 Proposals
• Pretty excited about the new JavaScript non-mutating array methods. Currently in stage 3
• 11:18 Transpiling unsupported CSS
• 15:11 Polyfills
• Popover polyfill
• 19:22 Polyfilling CSS
• 21:06 HTML polyfills
• 27:47 How to transpile and polyfill
• Babel
• TypeScript: JavaScript With Syntax For Types
• CoffeeScript
• Civet
• cronn/jsxtransformer: Pipeline for transforming JSX files using Babel.js and Uglify.js
• Svelte • Cybernetically enhanced web apps
• Polyfill.io
• core-js - npm
• 35:46 Shiv and shims
• Shim vs Shiv
• 38:16 Monkey patching
• 49:08 SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ×××

××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ×××

• Scott: Cable sleeve
• Wes: Air Purifier
• AliExpress

Shameless Plugs

• Scott: Sentry
• Wes: Wes Bos Tutorials

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• Wes Bos on Bluesky
• Scott on Bluesky
• Syntax on Bluesky

In this supper club episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Jake Champion about his work with Fastly and Polyfill, the difference between WASY and WASM, what Winter CG is, and what makes Fastly different.

Show Notes

• 00:35 Welcome
• 02:06 Who is Jake Champion?
• Jake (@JakeDChampion)
• JakeChampion on GitHub
• 04:31 How long as Polyfill been around?
• 06:11 What is Fastly?
• Fastly
• Polyfill
• WASMTime
• SpiderMonkey JavaScript/WebAssembly Engine
• 12:09 What are people running on the edge with Fastly?
• 16:29 What is Winter CG compliance?
• Winter CG proposal
• 17:55 What about node API’s being in platforms
• 21:18 What is WASY vs WASM?
• 24:37 Who is Web Assembly for?
• 31:34 Is there anything WASM is not good for?
• 41:39 What makes the Fastly runtime different from others
• Hono
• Smashing Mag - Web Workers
• Worker Tools
• 47:07 Supper Club questions
• iTerm2
• Zsh for Humans
• 50:26 SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ×××

××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ×××

• Luther TV Series
• Forrest Gump

Shameless Plugs

• Fiddle on Fastly
• js-compute

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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?

• 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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In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes conclude a three-part series about old browsers, fallbacks and polyfills. In part three, they talk specifically about transpiling and polyfilling.

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Show Notes

2:20 - Polyfills and Transpile

5:18 - Back in the day

• Border-radius htc hack
• PNG fix for transparent PNGs
• Flash for custom fonts
• Cufon and SIFR

10:48 - JavaScript Polyfills

• Features are polyfilled
• MDN Polyfill
• Core-js
• Polyfill.io
• HTML5 Cross Browser Polyfills

13:47 - JavaScript Transpile

• Syntax is transpiled
• babel-preset-env
• Babel has plugins and presets
• Meteor bundle to different browsers on demand
• There are polyfills for most things, but performance can be an issue
  • Resize observer
  • Intersection Observer
• Some things can’t be done with either
  • New browser APIs
  • Service workers, device access, inline video on old iOS, etc.

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